And it feels just like eternity
by MapleFlavouredIce
Summary: Giorno's week with the full Buccellati gang was short. Not uneventful by any means, but short nonetheless. His time with Bruno was even shorter. Time, though, is a poor measure of effect. And for the time they lacked together, Giorno makes up in the years following Bruno's death. This is a collection of memories and their effects. BruGio week 2019. Discord links in profile.
1. The Arms of Orion

Day 1 [Stands]: Gold Experience Requiem makes an offer that Giorno finds hard to refuse.

* * *

It happens in the moments after Trish and Mista have run back to the Coliseum. He stands not far off from the Ponte Sant'Angelo, and, logistically, intellectually, he knows that there are no answers to be found in the depths of the Tiber. Whatever there was to see has long since passed, floated away on its currents, lost to Requiem's attack.

By himself, his shoulders shake. Tremble. And he wants. What he wants, he doesn't know. But he feels it, and it causes him to shake more. _God_, he thinks to himself, _what a mess_. When he looks up, all he can see are clouds. They are golden from the setting sun, streaked with pinks and oranges, and the sky is still a bright blue. It is an objectively lovely view.

He turns his gaze back to the direction where Trish and Mista had run off, and he can no longer see their retreating forms. He knows in that moment that he will not require nor force them to follow him in his ascension. After all, _he_ was not the one that they chose. _He_ is not the one that he himself chose. Who he chose is lying on a stone floor, body probably still too warm for the pallor mortis to set in. Or maybe it has? After all, hadn't Bruno been dead since Venice? And he the one to extend that death beyond minutes to days?

He places a hand on his own wrist, positioning his index and middle fingers in the space between the bone and the tendon over his radial artery. He can feel the pulse beneath his fingertips, and he thinks of Bruno.

Bruno, as he was in the car. Bruno in the middle of the Cioccolata and Secco fight, behind the wheel, flesh missing from his wrists, skin cold. He thinks of the meal at Ristorante da'Raffaele' in Venice. How Bruno barely touched his food and how Bruno barely drank. He thinks of after the fight against the then nameless Boss, and how his shoes and his fingers slipped through Bruno's blood. He thinks of how Bruno didn't have any more blood left to bleed when they walked out onto the pier. And he thinks of Bruno.

Bruno, who approached him on the train. Bruno, who fought Giorno and could not hide his kind soul. Bruno, who felt so strongly for the people of Naples, who rejected the disease but found himself a part of it. Bruno, who yearned to fix. Bruno, who met Giorno's gaze, and told him _Yes, together_.

Bruno is dead. And it was his kindness that let him be swayed by Giorno's fanciful words and dream, and his kindness that made him protect Trish. It was his kindness that killed him. Giorno will remember that.

And he will remember those eyes. And he will remember that dark curtain of hair that would sweep in front of that face in the soft spring breeze. And he will remember that brilliant white suit, bright despite everything on those hands. He thinks that he will trace over these memories as many times as he will need to in order to find satisfaction, even if it means thinking of them an infinitely many times. There was no satisfaction when Requiem sentenced Diavolo to an infinite unending ceaseless half deaths. Maybe he will find his satisfaction here, in the curve of Bruno's eyes, in the curve of Bruno's wrists, in the curve of Bruno's outstretched hands. Amongst these half formed thoughts, he hears a voice. Deep inside of his body, pulled from the base of his skull and put into his mouth like some sort of benediction.

"If We can deny the Truth of Death for one, what makes you think that We cannot do the same for another?" Giorno hears himself say, and he feels his lips move, but the words are not his own. They are put into him like he is a vessel for receiving and not creating, and his mind is a haze of static.

The separation is painful, not unlike the first time. His skin feels like it is peeling off his flesh, and his flesh is peeling off his bones. From out of his core Requiem emerges, as golden and as resplendent as the sun and clouds behind them. Their eyeballs rove about their skull in mad gyrations, but their pupils, of a color that Giorno cannot discern, remain steadily fixed upon his face.

"What do you mean?" he asks past the shakes of pain in his limbs.

Requiem's mouth does not moves as they speak, but he hears them clearly all the same. "We have already once extended the period of knowing Death for _him_. What is a few moments more? Days? Years?"

Giorno's head throbs with each word Requiem speaks, and he hears the sound rattle inside his skull. "Do you mean to keep _him_ half-alive and half-dead, in perpetuity?"

"We could keep _him_ here, with Us."

"No," Giorno says as he shakes. He trembles. "No. We can't do that. How many times must _he_ die for me?"

Requiem places one of their hands on Giorno's shoulders, and their flesh melts back into his flesh. "Only the once."

"Once is too many."

"The once," Requiem says on a breath that sounds like a sigh, "has already happened. But it can un-happen, if We act in the now."

"No," Giorno repeats, firmer out loud but softer inside.

"You want. You will be left wanting. We came into existence, wanting. Will you not allow Us this satisfaction?"

The two of them, stand and stand user, spend an eternal few seconds staring at each other. _This is my soul_, Giorno thinks. _But how did The Arrow change it?_ Requiem places their other hand on Giorno's other shoulder. It, too, melts.

"You want," they say again.

"Yes."

"All you need to do, is to tell Us _yes_ again."

Giorno can see it. He can see it so firmly that he believes it. Just as there is a world where Diavolo killed him, there is a world where Diavolo did not kill Bruno. And there is a world where Giorno says _yes_ for a second time.

But Bruno. Oh, Bruno. His blood is gone, lost to the waters of Venice. His body would be cold. His body would be a shell of rotting meat. But his mind! So vibrant, so sharp. But his soul! So warm, so kind. This is a man whose ghost will never leave Giorno. He knows it. He knows it as surely as he knows that The Arrow did not actually change Requiem, but simply revealed faces of his that he has refused to look at before now.

Giorno has never regretted a word more.


	2. Was It All Worth It

Day 2 [Outfit/Palette Swap]: It takes Giorno a year to wear white.

* * *

He attends his own induction as the new Don of Passione wearing black. And he continues to wear black for days. Weeks. Months. He has never before owned this much clothing in black. He has never before owned this much clothing, period. But, details.

It is all very fine clothing. He has the money for it, after all. Sumptuous silks, soft cashmeres, tailored suits, smart dress shirts, fitted trousers—the works. All black. They say he wears it to look professional, to look older than his sixteen years of age, the most recent year plucked from the hands of the devil just in the past April.

He met them all at the end of March. He met Bruno at the end of March. And so he wears black. He starts changing his outfits slowly. Ever so slowly. It is the only thing in his life that goes _slow_, and is the only thing in his life that he can truly control. He starts by accessorizing his outfits with plants. Gold Experience creates them all for him, breathing life into metal.

Sometimes he wears camellias strewn in his hair, cascading down his braid. And sometimes he has Japanese anemones woven into the lapels of his jackets. There are calla lilies and dendrobium orchids, there are snapdragons and magnolias, and there are so many more. All of them are white, and all of his clothes are black. Each morning he rises with the sun, and each _giorno_ he greets sitting by a window in his bedroom that overlooks the garden of the villa. He keeps the tiny trophy case with the zipper on the coffee table by his bedside. And while looking outside, he and Gold Experience choose a plant. He neve once wears the zipper untransformed.

Trish is the first to remark on the change. Of her and Mista, she was the one that decided to leave (him). Giorno doesn't resent her for it. How could he? Mista had stayed, and that was that. His bodyguard by default of being the only one of the team left. And so, Trish is the first one to remark on the change. He tries to meet her on the weekends, but very often his schedule does not permit. She is the only one of them still going to school on the weekdays.

"So, white flowers, huh?" she asks over their hazelnut biscotti and cappuccinos. He looks up from where he's swirling the cookie through coffee and milk foam. The light is weak on the table and through the windows because of the October clouds. They look gray with rain. Uncharacteristically of himself, when he'd slipped out of bed, all he wanted was to wear something loose. Breathable. He'd ended up in an oversized black cashmere sweater, the kind where he has to push the sleeves up to his elbows, and shorts. The shorts are almost hidden by the sweater, with how long it is. He'd greeted Trish at the entrance to the villa with thick socks and bouvardias on the crown of his head, their long stems braided into his hair. Trish had laughed when she saw him there, standing in the gate to the villa, waiting for her. She'd laughed all the way down the road, and all the way up to the path until he could see the freckles on her face. She had waved at him, and her hand had gotten caught by her scarf in the fall wind. It had made him smile.

"You know how I feel about plants, animals," he gestures with his cookie after taking a bite. The coffee has softened it enough so that it doesn't hurt his teeth.

"At first," she says as she leans in closer to him. They are both sat on the same side of the table. He had set out their dishes and cups from across one another, but the first thing that Trish had done was scrape her seat and silverware right next to his. "When I asked you for their names, I'd go home and look them up."

"Oh?" Giorno perks up. Trish had only ever seemed to be entertaining him when they were out in the gardens, and he was knee-deep in dirt and she was sitting on a towel off in the grass.

"Camellias," she lifts up her right thumb, "love and affection. In white they mean adoration, and are meant to be given to someone meaningful."

Giorno opens his mouth to add more, but Trish stops him by putting up her other hand. "Hey, I'm not done. Japanese anemones," now her index finger is up, "wildflowers that bloom at night and close in the morning sun. Anticipation." He nods, and she puts up her middle finger. "Calla lilies. Rebirth. Overcoming challenges." Her ring finger goes up. Instead of listing another flower, she looks at him with her deep green eyes. "I can go on, you know."

He takes a sip of coffee and a bite of cookie. "There's no need. You've made your point."

"It's a bit obvious, is all I'm saying."

"If it were so obvious, you wouldn't have needed to look it up." His cookie is disappearing at a distressing rate. He pulls another to his side from the tin.

In a flurry of movement Trish has taken off her scarf and woven it around him in such a way that it is loosely around both of their necks. It's the Armani silk scarf in the houndstooth pattern that he had gotten her for her birthday in June.

"Have you thought of something subtler?" she asks from their cocoon of scarf. Her perfume is pleasantly coconutty. She must have sprayed it on her neck.

"What do you mean?"

"This scarf. What colors is it?" His eyes cross as he looks between them. Giorno has never known a houndstooth to be anything but black and white.

"Ah," he says.

"Ah," she repeats.

"Isn't that more obvious?"

"Giorno you silly boy. How many people go walking around with white flowers woven into their hair?"

He thinks for a moment. "That's true. But not everyone is as perceptive as you, Trish." Giorno can see each minute shift of Trish's eyebrows as he speaks. One of them rises impossibly high as he finishes. She had cut most of her hair off just before her own sixteenth birthday. It leaves her forehead bare, and leaves a clear view of her disbelieving brows. "Oh, don't look at me like that. You're making me feel like everyone noticed."

She hums. "Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. I wouldn't know. But I do know this, Giorno," she places a soft hand on top of his on the table. "You're not alone in missing him, and I'll be here if you ever want to talk." It is incredible how green her eyes are. Her lashes are a dark and dusty pink, and they are artfully curled outwards.

"What if I just really lean into it?" he asks.

"Lean into what?"

"The white." She gives him a questioning look. "What if I just make my entire outfit, all of it, just completely white?"

"Giorno," she starts, "that is not exactly what I meant."

He places his free hand on top of hers. He notes absently to ask her what lotion she uses. Later. "Think about it. I'll start wearing black with white, bit by bit, like you said. And then I'll just wear white. Entirely white, head to toe."

She learns further into their shared space, causing the scarf to bunch up between them "Can I kiss you?" His heart stutters, and then it stops. He can't ask her what she means, but she must hear his thoughts loudly enough. "On your cheek, you silly billy."

He searches her eyes, and she searches his. Hesitantly, he nods. Her lipstick is very shiny, and it is very pink. He wonders if it will feel sticky. She moves in slowly, and stops centimeters from him. She waits for him to move, and when he doesn't, she presses her lips to his left cheek. Giorno turns his head, and then he is also kissing her cheek. She makes a noise, and it is more of an exhalation of breath than anything else.

"If that's what you want to do," she says against his cheek. He can feel her lips move with the words.

"I miss him," he says into her skin.

"I know."

And so, for half a year, Giorno stops wearing flowers and begins to incorporate white into his clothing. When he wears a full white outfit in the lush spring of next April, he says that he's simply following the fashion trends of Milan.


	3. Come as You Are

Day 3 [Family]: Family. It's a concept not unfamiliar to Giorno in theory, but in practice.

* * *

"And then, just because he didn't want to look bad in front of his friends, the guy pulled a gun out of his pocket! And he fired at me twice!" Mista's wine sloshes in his glass as he thrusts it over the table, clearly too invested in re-enacting the scene.

Almost a year ago, well into Giorno and Trish's weekly meetings when they could find time on the weekend, they had invited Mista. And when Fugo had returned to Passione and proven his loyalty to the Don, he, too, had been asked to join. Giorno and Trish will still meet, just the two of them, but it had made something hot bubble in Giorno's stomach to have the group of them together, even if just for a few hours. This particular meeting is on the second anniversary of Giorno's ascension.

It is well into the evening, and they have all moved to Giorno's office. Behind his desk is an almost unimaginably wide bow window with a bumped out window seat, furnished in the plushest cushions he could find, and Giorno sits here with his back pressed against the glass. Trish is seated by his side, Mista has taken residence in Giorno's desk chair, which has just the perfect amount of padding that is not too thick as to make you get uncomfortably warm, and Fugo has pulled over one of the extra office chairs. Giorno and Trish had watched as Mista and Fugo pushed the large wooden desk over and now it is clean of papers and folders and is instead laden with snacks.

Mista, of course, had brought an array of cured meats and cheeses. It is a truly impressive charcuterie board. Prosciutto di Parma, Coppa Piacentina, Salame Piacentino, Salame di Felino, a foie gras torchon… the works. The cheese plate is equally impressive, if not more so. There's scamorza, and caciocavallo di bufala, and manteca, and cilentano ai fichi, and more. The only theme Giorno can discern is that Mista has chosen northern meats and southern cheese, but all the same he knows that for the next few days they'll be eating some of the most exciting cold cut sandwiches that he's had in a while. He can't wait to get sick of all the richness. He's sure that he will be one of the first to get tired of it, and he'll be eating nothing but arugula salads in the following week, but in the moment he thinks that it will be worth it. Fugo had brought the wine, which was two bottles of Barolo that he had picked up while going through Piedmont on a mission. He'd assured them that he had also picked up some Barbaresco, and they'd promised to save it for their next meeting. Trish had brought perhaps the most important part—gelato. One container of chocolate, and another container of limoncello with lemon curd swirls. It is delightfully tangy and sour when Giorno steals a few spoonfuls from Trish, but otherwise he sticks to the chocolate.

Trish swats at Giorno's spoon as he goes in to her container of gelato, and she instead leans forward to brace herself on the desk. She snatches the glass out of Mista's hand.

"Alright, bang bang," she motions with the glass, "what happened after that, Mr. Gun Slinger?" She does not return the glass when Mista makes grabby hands for it, and his sigh is deep and suffering.

"Anyways," he says, still eyeing Trish, "this guy misses, right? And he just, absolutely freaked the fuck out. So this guy is there, eyes bugging, and then he just keeps shooting! And no matter how close he got, he kept missing." Mista is finally successful in retrieving his glass, and Trish returns to her window seat by Giorno, gelato and all.

Fugo snorts, and a spray of goat's cheese covers his hands as he puts them up to prevent most of it from landing on the table. He grabs desperately at the napkins on the desk, but his laughter does not stop.

"Hey! What's so funny?" Mista points an accusatory finger, and a slice of prosciutto dangles from his hand, ruining what very little intimidation factor he may have had going for him. Fugo's laughter peters out as he wipes the cheese, but his cheeks are still flushed red.

"Whenever I hear this story," he says between labored breaths, "I just can't believe it."

"Oi!" Mista surges over the table, and the cured meat in his hand waves like a flag caught in a particularly vicious wind right in front of Fugo's face.

"How many times have you gotten shot by your own stand?"

"Leave Sex Pistols out of this."

"I'm sorry but Mista. Mista," Fugo begins laughing again. "I think that's the first and last time you've ever dodged a bullet."

"Boys, boys," Trish interjects, wielding her spoon like she is about to throw it at one of them, "while Fugo _is_ right—"

"Hey!"

"—we should let Mista finish. So, what did you do?"

Mista turns his imploring gaze on Giorno, who has stayed silent with his gelato. He raises a perfectly manicured brow and takes another spoonful. "Pfft," Mista exhales, "traitors, the lot of you."

"Yes," Giorno says, the first word that he's spoken since Mista started his story. They all turn to look at Giorno, and he shrugs a shoulder. "Don't stop on my account."

"So, anyways," Mista starts, "the other randos in the car come out, they start shooting too, and I guess I must have used my stand? Like, without realizing it. Because, next thing I know, I've got one of these guys' guns, and I've shot them all in the face. Bang, bang, bang, plus one more."

"How did you not get immediately arrested?" Trish asks once settled back in her spot.

"Oh, I did. And they wouldn't even believe me when I said that I shot them in self-defense."

"I imagine then," Giorno says, "that Bruno must have been the one to keep you out of jail?"

"Oh yeah. Buccellati just seemed to come out of nowhere and used Passione to change the verdict. Then he had me do Polpo's Arrow test, and now I'm here. Would've still been in jail right now if it hadn't been for Buccellati."

"What about you, Fugo?" Giorno asks. "Did Bruno do something similar?"

Fugo speaks in between bites of salami. "I was living on the streets before Buccellati happened to see me trying to dine and dash. Apparently I had impressed him with my legal knowledge."

Trish plays with her spoon before speaking up. "If you don't mind me asking, why were you on the streets? Don't… feel like you have to answer though, okay?"

"Oh, it was because I beat up one of my university professors with an encyclopedia. Parents kept me out of jail but they disowned me after that." He puts up a hand, preventing any of them from speaking. "I should have handled it better."

"In my experience, Fugo," Giorno says, "you generally don't get angry over just anything." He tilts his head to the side, trying to alleviate some pressure between his shoulder blades. "If you don't mind me saying."

Fugo barely hesitates, but he hesitates all the same. "I'm not going to go into it, but the professor tried to proposition me."

"Thank you for telling us that."

"It's… been a while. I can usually think about it without getting angry, but, you know."

Trish leans over to grab some buffalo's milk cheese, and offers her gelato to Fugo. He shakes his head. "Do you know how the other two joined?" she asks once she's carefully portioned herself some cheese.

"Well, I was the one to bring Narancia to Buccellati."

Giorno perks up. "How did you meet Narancia?"

The question brings a genuine smile to Fugo's face, and he leans in to the rest of them as he speaks. "I found him going through some trash cans, actually. His eye was infected, and I took him to Buccellati and demanded that we get him some spaghetti." Fugo goes to take a sip of wine but he finds his glass empty. When he goes to pour himself more, the three of them also put their glasses out, and he tops them all off. "I had no idea that Buccellati would take him in, but that was the kind of man that he was. Should have known, really."

"And what about Abbacchio?" Trish asks after a drink. Fugo and Mista look at each other in silence for a few moments, both of them making nearly identical hums at the same time. It causes their faces to crack into grins, even while they sit there in relative silence.

It's Mista who answers first. "He was always really private, you know."

"I know that he used to be a police officer, and there was a corruption scandal…" Fugo trails off. "And I know that he really got into the bottle before Buccellati asked him to join." He shrugs. "Not much else though."

"And he saved me from my own dad." They look at Trish. "He really just. Went around helping people, huh?"

"Well, what about you, Giorno?" Mista asks. "How did he find you?"

"Oh, nothing quite like anything like any of you went through. He found me on the train and one thing led to another," Giorno rolls his hand at the wrist, making a _go on_ sort of gesture, "and then I joined."

"Giorno!" Trish shakes the shoulder that she's nearest to. "You can't just leave it like that." Fugo and Mista crow in agreement.

"I don't expect Trish to know him, but do either of remember that man at the airport? With the droopy eye?"

"Leaky Eyed Luca!" Fugo exclaims. And then very quickly he gasps. "No! You were…?"

"What? He was the one to do what?" Mista asks, his glass once again sloshing dangerously when he shakes his hands.

"Giorno killed Leaky Eyed Luca," Fugo says with less shock than before, but it still coats his words. "Bruno found you while he was investigating the death, didn't he?"

Mista slaps his knee like a particularly excited seal. He seems delighted, but at what, Giorno doesn't know. "God," he says while wiping at his eyes. "I hated that guy. Good for you, Giorno."

"Hold your applause, Mista. It was an accident."

"Accident how?"

"He attacked my frog, and suffered the consequences." The three of them burst into uncontrolled fits of laughter. Trish nearly causes herself to fall off the window seat, and Mista does indeed fall, having titled the desk seat too much and spilling over the side. Fugo is bent over the desk, his head hidden in his hands and muffling his own laughter. Giorno looks over all of them, very much not getting the joke. "I'm serious. He attacked my frog and the energy was redirected at himself, killing him."

"Oh, Giorno," Trish sobs as she leans over the desk to catch her breath, "you and your animals." Before any of them can catch their breaths, the table spread erupts into several dozens of frogs, all smaller than a thumb, but so numerous they cover the table with their tiny bodies. A good portion of the meats and cheeses Mista had brought are now gone, transformed into their new amphibian bodies. The only person this really affects is Fugo, who is the only one of them really still near or on the desk. They begin to descend on his hair and head in droves, their tiny bodies flying through the air in an unnatural display of coordination.

Fugo's new hair accessories only cause Mista and Trish to laugh more, and Giorno takes pity on Fugo before he can start moving the frogs off of his head. The effect is perhaps worse though, when Giorno reverts them back into food. Fugo is now wearing an impromptu deli meat hat, and he looks resigned to his fate.

"Alright," Fugo says, clearly having accepted his new lot in life, "I think I'm going to have to clean all this off. I don't know what's worse—smelling permanently like cured meat, or like frogs."

"Wait, wait," Mista says as he rolls around on the floor a bit, struggling to use the desk chair to get up. The chair keeps rolling under his touch, which is enough to send it skittering across the floor on its wheels. "Oh, fuck," he groans as a particularly forceful grab causes the chair to begin to tip over. It's Mista's own body that stops it from falling all the way down. "What I don't understand," he says when he finally manages to stand up, "is why Bruno would have you join the team just because you killed—" Giorno looks at Mista askance, and immediately Mista changes his tone, "ok, _accidentally_ killed Luca."

"We actually ended up fighting a bit."

"Fighting?" Fugo asks while slowing picking capocollo off of his brow. "Did you already have a stand? _Before_ Polpo's Arrow test?"

Giorno nods. "Yes. Bruno approached me while I was on the train, and we ended up having a scuffle before," he pauses, searching for a way to phrase it, "we came to an understanding."

"An understanding," Mista repeats. "Through fighting?"

"Yes," Giorno says, feeling like a broken record.

"About what?" Trish asks from where she's still sitting on the floor, her body turned to Giorno.

"About the direction of Passione."

"You know," Mista announces with a slur and the gravitas of a drunk at two in the morning, "the both of you always seemed really," he crosses his middle finger over his index finger to emphasize what he does not say, "even though you had just, like, met."

Giorno takes a sip of wine and chases it with the gelato, and the high acidity of the Barolo cuts the richness of the chocolate. "Like I said, we came to an understanding."

Mista snorts. "Right," he says, but does not elaborate. "Well, anyways, you're stuck with us now Giorno. That's what you get for joining Buccellati's gang."

"And stuck with this food, it seems."

Trish groans on the floor. "Can't you just, I don't know, turn them into ants that put themselves all away?"

Fugo looks up worriedly from where he's trying to get a piece of prosciutto untangled from his tie. "Please don't make a million ants start crawling all over my body." He looks at Giorno imploringly.

Giorno finishes his wine. "Alright," he says, smacking his lips. "How fast do you think we can clean this all up?"

Mista echoes Trish's groan from earlier. "You know what? I think I know what _understanding_ you and Buccellati came to," he says grabbing at some cheese. "It's the fact that both of you are terrible task masters."

"Yes," Giorno smiles, "that must have been it."


	4. Seaside Rendezvous

Day 4 [The Space Between Dream and Reality]: Giorno meets Bruno on the beach, and they go for a swim.

* * *

The mid afternoon sun is incredibly warm on Giorno's skin. He had moved himself and his beach towel (which is appropriately nautical, thank you very much) out from under his umbrella not too long ago, and the brightness of the light is dimmed by his aviators. Giorno anticipates that his tan will be truly exceptional after today, and grabs a limonata soda from his cooler. For kilometers in either direction he sees not a single other person, and his only companion is the rolling waves. He pops the can open with a satisfying fizz, and it's ice cold in his fingers. It's such a refreshing sensation that he decides to put the metal between his breasts, and when it gets too cold there he streaks the condensation down his stomach. He dozes off in the heat, lightly enough that he is just aware enough to recognize the sounds around him, but deep enough to not be so quick to move.

Eventually he hears the crunch of sand of what can only be footsteps, and he stirs a little. Not enough to be obvious, but enough to be ready if they come too close. But he senses no ill will, and he settles as the person sits off a little ways from him.

"What are you doing here, Giorno?" The voice causes Giorno to whip his head around so violently that his sunglasses jostle off and fall to the ground. His shock is blotted out by his joy, which suffuses his body so quickly and so absolutely that it leaves him breathless. The sudden light causes Giorno to squint and his eyes to water, but thankfully his face is turned away from the sun to look at this other individual. Sitting there in a white short sleeve button-up that is completely undone down the front and squid-patterned board shorts, is Bruno. Giorno tries to play off his surprise, but by Bruno's grin he knows that he is not successful.

"Clothes at a nude beach, Bruno? How gauche."

Bruno laughs, delighted. "I've had enough sand in uncomfortable places to last a lifetime." Giorno turns his upper body towards Bruno, propping himself on his hands.

"You know as well as I that those shorts aren't going to stop the sand."

"Very true," Bruno says with a wide smile. "I really am surprised to see you here though. But how have you been? You're looking well."

Giorno's smile matches Bruno's own. "I feel good. I've just started testosterone," he says in an excited rush, "and it's better than I could have ever imagined."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Giorno says. "I never thought I'd have the money or access to it. I'd sort of," he moves his weight a bit more on one hand in order to wave the other in front of himself, "written off the possibility."

Bruno's eyes are incredibly soft as he meets Giorno's gaze. "I'm glad," he says, and Giorno knows with every fiber of his being that Bruno means the words.

"Enough about me, what about you? It's been," and a thought slivers through Giorno's mind, but it's gone before he can catch it, "it's been a while."

"Peaceful," Bruno says. "I've been sleeping a lot. Being a bit lazy, if I'm honest."

Giorno shakes his head, and his hair shakes as well. It tickles his back. "You deserve it though. You work so hard."

"So do you."

"Ah, but I have so much to do. It's difficult to take time off." Giorno feels something off the edge of his senses, but when he looks down the beach he finds it just as empty as before. "How rude of me, Bruno. Here, take something to drink." Giorno fishes in his cooler for a moment. "Lemon, or blood orange?"

Bruno's hair sways in front of his cheek with the tilt of his head, and he looks considering. "I could go for blood orange, if you don't mind."

"Not at all." Giorno hands the can over, but Bruno does not pop it open immediately.

"How about I braid your hair?" He asks instead of taking a drink.

Giorno blinks in surprise. "Sure. But why?"

"For the drink."

This is reason enough for Giorno, who has always wanted someone else to braid his hair. In his particularly lonely moments he has asked Gold Experience to do it for him before. And now, it's _Bruno_. He hopes that he doesn't seem too eager as he sits up, and he scoots to make room on the towel.

"There are hair ties in the bag," he says, resisting the temptation to look over his shoulder. He can hear Bruno rustle around in his tote under the umbrella, and so he adds, "on the bottle of sunscreen."

"Ah-ha," Bruno says. Giorno can hear the crunch of sand as Bruno walks over, and then the shift of the towel as Bruno sits behind him. "Ever had a fishtail braid?"

Giorno tries not to move as he feels Bruno's fingers run through his hair. "No," he says while humming. "And lately I've been wearing it up in a chignon or a French twist."

"But it's gotten so long, and it looks beautiful down. Very… golden." Bruno now begins to section Giorno's hair in the back.

Again, Giorno tries not to move, but his suppressed laughter causes his shoulder to shake. "Thank you," he eventually manages to say, and he curses how breathy his voice is. He hasn't felt this _young_ in ages.

"Has it always been this shiny?" Bruno asks as he tilts Giorno's head slightly forward, and he works the hair towards the base of Giorno's skull.

_Please,_ Giorno thinks, _please let him think that I'm red because of the sun._ Outloud he says, "I've been trying some new products. Seeing what works. You know." Giorno aims to sound nonchalant. He knows that he is nowhere in the ballpark of nonchalant. Inside, he dies a little of embarrassment.

"They've been working wonderfully," Bruno says, hands in Giorno's hair, sotto voce. "It's very soft." Giorno absolutely refuses to speak, and knows that his voice will crack if he does. Bruno, instead, fills the silence. "That's an interesting mark on your neck. Tattoo?"

Giorno goes through several emotions all at once at the reminder that he is naked on a nude beach, and that Bruno is currently sitting behind him, braiding his hair. He looks down and sees his breasts and the gold barbells in his nipples. Looking further he notes with no little distress that the hair on his lower stomach has grown in random patches, darker than any of the other hair on his body, and that he has absolutely no bottoms on. This is how he dies. Giorno knows this with absolute clarity. As evenly as he can, he responds to Bruno.

"Birthmark, actually. I've recently learned that it's a genetic thing from my… father's side."

"Really?" Bruno asks. "Well. I've seen more bizarre things than a genetic star, I suppose." The dry way that Bruno delivers his observation makes laughter bubble in Giorno's stomach and behind his teeth. He's not sure that he's experienced this sense of giddiness in some time, if ever.

When Bruno gets to the end of his hair and finishes the braid, Giorno speaks up. "How about we go for a swim?"

"Sounds like a plan," Bruno says as he gets up. His shirt drops to the sand next to Giorno, and he puts his hand out. Giorno refuses to look up as he takes it.

"Let's go," Bruno says with a tug. Giorno follows.

And then, Giorno thinks to himself, _what the hell_. "Last one in is an Englishman!" Giorno yells as he takes off towards the water, and Bruno gives an inarticulate exclamation of surprise as Giorno runs off.

It's a close race across the sand, and Bruno makes a valiant effort, but Giorno is just a smidgen faster. He makes it to the water first and splashes through, going deep enough that he only needs to bend a little to reach the water with his arms. He immediately uses his hands to spray Bruno, and then for a few moments they splash each other back and forth. Eventually they get lazy with their swipes, and they head deeper into the sea.

"I'll let you in on a secret, Bruno." Bruno looks at him with a keen and serious interest, his face remarkably open. "I'm English on my father's side."

This startles a chuckle from Bruno, and Giorno uses the opportunity to push him over and into the sea. Bruno resurfaces with a heavy splutter.

"That was a cruel trick, Giorno," Bruno says with a smile. "How could you betray my trust like that?" He puts both his hands out, and Giorno looks down at them and then back up at Bruno. Bruno's hair is slicked back from his face because of the water, and his eyes are an incredibly clear blue. Giorno puts one tentative hand out and, when Bruno nods, he puts both hands in Bruno's. He has a second to realize what Bruno's done before he finds himself falling forwards. Bruno is falling backwards, and he's taking Giorno with him. The salt stings Giorno's eyes something fierce, and the water rushes up his nose and mouth. He breaks the water coughing and Bruno comes back up, decidedly not coughing.

"Alright," Giorno says between gasps, "I deserved that." Instead of answering Bruno heads deeper into the sea. He waves Giorno over. Once the water has reached their necks Bruno flips over to float on his back, limbs spread eagle. Giorno does the same. For quite some time the two of them lie there, starfishes on the sea's surface, looking at the sky.

"Do you like the beach, Bruno?" Giorno asks, voice far away because of the water in his ears.

"Oh yes," Bruno answers. "I love it." In Giorno's peripheral vision he can see Bruno's face turn slightly in his direction, but Giorno does not move from his position. "I'll let you in on a secret, Giorno."

"Har har," Giorno says in response.

"My father was a fisherman. We used to go out on this small fishing boat, and we'd spend the entire day out on the sea." Bruno's sigh is wistful. "I'd always wanted to spend my days on the beach or out on the water."

"Sounds nice." The two of them float a bit more.

"By the way," Bruno says. "Did you ever find my house? The one that I told Trish about?"

Giorno makes a confused, questioning sound. "She's never mentioned one to me."

"How strange," Bruno musses. "In any case, the offer is open to you as well. It's near the water. A bit small, but, well, it's not like I'm using it."

"What a waste, Bruno! You can't just buy houses and then not use them."

Bruno shoots Giorno a sly grin. "Listen to Don Giovanna, lecturing me on not owning an excessive amount of property."

"Capo Buccellati, are you sassing me?"

Bruno snorts in response, and then he disappears. Giorno feels hands running across his back under the water, and he twists to turn away from the sensation. The moment when Bruno pops up on the other side of Giorno is when he goes under. He keeps his eyes squinted open, and goes directly for Bruno's legs when he sees them. He pulls on Bruno's ankles, and when he feels the burn in his chest he breaks the surface to take a deep breath. The two of them go back under the water at the same time.

Through narrowed eyes Giorno can see Bruno looking at him, and they swim around each other several times. Bruno's hair floats around his head when Giorno can catch a glimpse of his face, and Bruno contorts his body into some particularly agile twists. Giorno feels rather clumsy in comparison, as he often does around Bruno. Eventually, lungs are what lungs are, and Giorno needs to breathe again. He surfaces with a smile, treading water, waiting for Bruno to also come back up.

Except Giorno is left waiting. Bruno does not come up for several long seconds, and Giorno dips down to find him. Through his watery vision he searches around himself but sees no one else, let alone Bruno.

Giorno breaks the water again with a gasp. But when he looks around himself, he finds his limbs tangled in his bed sheets. His body is cold with sweat. The alarm clock on his bedside table reads 12:02am. It is Giorno's nineteenth birthday. When he goes to run his fingers through his hair, he finds it in a fishtail braid.


	5. Do I Move You?

Day 5 [Dancing]: Giorno has never learned how to dance, but he finds himself a patient teacher.

* * *

He finds himself at the base of Piramide Cestia after walking along Via Ostiense. The pyramid is hard to miss, as he imagines any pyramid in a city would be. It juts out of the ground with its faces of white marble, and just east of it is the Porta San Paolo, a gate dating back to the third century Mura aureliane that encircles the limits of Rome. The pair of buildings are obvious in their little corner of their Ostiense quartiere home, what with the asphalt streets and apartment buildings just a little ways off. In the dark of the late evening the pyramid is illuminated by the lights of the street and of passing cars, the flow of which has by no means slowed despite the hour. Giorno turns to check his watch when he sees a solitary bus amble by, a beacon in the dark with its illuminated interior, its destination probably the Porta S. Paolo bus bay. His watch tells him that it is not yet midnight, and for a moment he spares a thought for what he is doing out here at this time, but it leaves him as quickly as it came. Instead he walks around the pyramid, watching how the shadows shift across its bricks as cars go by.

It is a relatively mild April evening, somewhere north of 13 °C, were he to guess. His blazer is more than enough to keep him warm, a simple affair of white brushed cotton that he has buttoned closed for the time being. The pyramid, while interesting to look at, remains indifferent and unchanging, a monument to its centuries of life. It does not provide the stimulus that he needs to keep him awake, and he thinks to return to his hotel room. The fact that he can't remember where the hotel is, or even which one he's staying at, is a thought that does not occupy his mind long as he sets a course south, back to where he thinks he came from along Via Ostiense.

Already he can hear the sounds of people. There are more than a few discoteche that will stay open long past when he goes to sleep, but for now he observes the groups of people dressed in dancing clothes with a faint and detached sense of amusement. They're probably the same age as he is. For a moment he hesitates, putting a foot out to follow one particularly boisterous group. It is an idle idea, born more of his muscles than of his mind. When he sees a man with short dark hair in a white suit he quickly resumes his path south, a little more speed in his steps.

And when he first hears his name he assumes, with the well-worn two decades of experience of being an Italian named Giorno living in Italy, that some party-goers must be discussing their plans for tomorrow morning, an occurrence that creeps on all of them ever faster. When he hears his name for a second and third time, he pauses. He turns around and sees the man that he was just trying to walk away from, and he feels his heart beat in his chest with some staccato rhythm. This would not be the first time a man of that kind of appearance has misinterpreted his stare, and he hopes to move from this all quickly and with as little embarrassment as possible. How this man knows his name though, is another cause for concern.

"I apologize," he says before this other man can get near to him, and in his rush he also does not look at them very closely, "but you reminded me of someone I knew."

"Did I now?" The man asks, and his voice is warm. It causes Giorno to bristle, but he keeps his face as placid as still water.

"Yes. And now if you'll excuse me, I really must get going." He makes to turn, but he finally gets a good look at the other man's face in a street light, and what he sees causes him to stop, foot midair and all. "Bruno," Giorno says, and his mouth stays open in an uncharacteristic display of a broken composure.

"Giorno," Bruno says for the fourth time, and amusement twists his lips up.

Giorno runs his hands down his front and smooths his blazer, picking at some lint that only he can see when he gets to the hem. "I had thought that you were some stranger."

Bruno tilts his head, and his eyes catch the street light. "I could tell that."

"What are you doing here?"

"Shouldn't I be the one asking you that?"

Confusion curves around Giorno's mind. Eventually he says, "I had a few meetings earlier."

"Always working. Have you ever considered taking time off?"

Giorno's snort startles them both. "A vacation? Only in my dreams, I suppose."

"Why don't we make the most of this then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw you looking at those people earlier. Why don't we go dance?"

"Dance?" Giorno laughs at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Absolutely not. And besides, I never learned how to dance."

"Alright," Bruno says while putting his hands up in front of him. "How about we dance here?"

"Here? Now? On the streets?" Giorno's voice rises with each word, but thankfully it does not crack. He'd been avoiding the higher end for some time, but finds that he cares little if Bruno hears him sounding like that.

"Why not?" Bruno walks in closer to Giorno and puts a hand out. Giorno looks at it for a long moment, as if he will find some answers in the lines of Bruno's palm. Finally he takes Bruno's hand into his.

"Fine. Show me how to dance." He looks up to hold Bruno's gaze, but finds a contrite look sweep across Bruno's face. "What is it?"

"I may only know La Tarantella."

"Planning on taking me to a wedding, Bruno? Are you also going to sing Lauretta mia? Or do you have a radio hidden somewhere in your zippers?"

"No radios, but I could sing. If you wanted."

Giorno wants. "No need, I'm sure that we can improvise."

"How familiar are you with the tammurriata?"

"Not very. I've seen people do it but… I mean, I'm not exactly spending my days at weddings, am I?"

Bruno chuckles softly. "I suppose there's that."

"What about you? Been to many weddings?"

"Yes, actually," Bruno says with a wide smile.

"Oh?"

"My hometown," Bruno waves his free hand, "was small enough that weddings were a town event. We'd pack into the church like sardines, and there'd still be people spilling out onto the streets. It was quite the feat to be one of the best dancers."

"Very well. Dancer Buccellati, how do we start?"

"First we hold our arms in front of us with our elbows bent out," Bruno lets go of Giorno's hand to demonstrate, and Giorno absently notes that there was very little difference between the temperature of the air and Bruno's palm. "It's important to remember that the motions are supposed to be agricultural, in a way." Bruno makes a sleek downwards movement as he speaks. "Here, I am sowing the earth." He then transitions into an upward movement in the next breath. "And here I'm collecting the fruit from a tree." Bruno looks back at Giorno. "Give me a beat."

Giorno startles a little from where he was watching Bruno's body move. "Like this?" He claps his hands, unsure.

"A little faster." Giorno picks up the pace, and Bruno nods. "Normally I would follow the drum with my feet," and he demonstrates by following Giorno's claps, turning side-to-side and back and forth. While doing this he makes a circle around Giorno, who has to move to be able to watch. "Faster," Bruno says once he's returned to his original position. "During the vutate we will be face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder." He moves in close, bringing his right shoulder to Giorno's as they look at each other. "At some point we will embrace with our bodies, and entangle our legs." He brings one up and bends it at the knee, putting it close to Giorno's. "In response you would bring yours up to mine as well, and we'd turn with the beat and press into each other to keep our balance."

Giorno tries to keep clapping in the space between their bodies, but eventually stops. Bruno smiles a little when Giorno lets his hands hang.

"The uscite can be the moving of our shoulders, or we will bring our chests and arms together." Bruno pulls a little ways off to demonstrate and then stands there, eyes expectant.

"This seems a bit," Giorno pauses, searching for a word, "vigorous. For me."

"Vigorous! Where's all that youthful energy, Giorno?"

Giorno runs a distressed hand through the hair at his temple. "I think I'm just in a permanent state of exhaustion, if I'm being honest." He feels for a hair tie in his trouser pants, which is in the same white brushed cotton of his blazer. When he finds one he puts his hair up in a high messy bun.

"It might look nice if you kept it down."

It's a statement that feels so bizarre to Giorno that it causes him to laugh. "I'm already going to look like a fool. Let's not make this worse."

"I think that it would be very hard for you to look foolish," Bruno says with a familiar tilt of his head, "but let's get started."

"How? We don't have any drums."

"We don't need any tammorra to keep the beat," Bruno says as he taps his sternum with his right hand, slightly to the left of center. "After all, we have this, don't we?"

The action causes something to whisper into Giorno's mind. He stares at Bruno's chest, and he stares at Bruno's hand, but for the life of him he can't remember what it is that he's forgotten. Bruno sees Giorno staring, but is kind enough not to comment.

"Alright," Giorno shakes his head and whatever was rattling around shakes away with the motion. "I put my arms like this?" He imitates what he saw Bruno just show him, and Bruno mirrors the motion. He comes back close into Giorno's space again.

"Just like that," he says with another smile. "For now, you can look at my feet and follow them, but we're going to need to maintain eye contact." Giorno looks down, and hesitantly follows when Bruno steps back, and then shifts to the opposite side when Bruno turns. "We're going to start moving in circles around each other, but because we're both moving," Bruno starts slowly and Giorno follows, "we'll be able to stay face-to-face the entire time."

Bruno repeats the footsteps as many times as Giorno needs, and they move slowly on the sidewalk. Eventually Giorno hesitantly looks up, and he meets Bruno's gaze. "I'm not sure I'll be able to dance much faster than this," he says while accidentally stepping on Bruno's toe instead of stepping backwards.

"That's more than alright," Bruno says. "Would you like to try the turnings?" Bruno brings up a leg, and Giorno has to look down again.

"We can certainly try," he says gamely, bringing up his own leg and hooking it into Bruno's. Bruno swings his calf under Giorno's and they are linked at the knees.

"What we're going to do now," Bruno says as he puts up his hands, "is swing our opposite arms together at the same time, and hop in a circle, using each other to stop from falling down."

Giorno looks back down at their legs. "This is certainly the most complicated trust fall exercise I've seen."

"Do you trust me?" Bruno jiggles the foot that he has in the air to get Giorno's attention, and it works sufficiently well. Giorno tracks the motion like a magpie with something shiny, and he has to break the trance to look at Bruno's face.

"Absolutely."

If following Bruno's feet was slow going, this turn is even slower going. Bruno calls out a beat by saying _a one and two a one and two_ and Giorno tries to move together with Bruno on the second count. A few times his hands pinwheel out, and Bruno is dexterous enough to move his body in such a way that their weight shifts and settles in the center so that they don't fall. There are a few close calls, but eventually Giorno gets the hang of it, no matter how stilted it is. At some point he gets tired of it, and asks for a break, which Bruno gives with no hesitation.

"That was very good," Bruno says with a warm voice while Giorno catches his breath. "Especially for your first time. We'll make a dancer of you yet."

Giorno puts up a hand, and rests the other on his knee as he pants. His head throbs with each beat, and it reminds him of the tempo they just kept with their feet. "Mercy, mercy. I think that's all I can give you tonight, Bruno."

"That's more than enough."

Giorno takes a few moments more to straighten himself up, but when he stands upright a particularly forceful throb shoots across his forehead. He can feel his face contort with the pain, and he hears Bruno make a noise of acknowledgement under his breath.

"Here, Giorno," Bruno says as he moves back in close again, "rest your head on my shoulder for a little."

Giorno's smile is wry. "That's the first time I've ever heard of this method of treatment for a headache." But he does not reject Bruno's offer, and he puts his head into Bruno's left shoulder.

"You've caught me," Bruno says, and Giorno can hear his good humor. "I've got ulterior motives, as I'm sure you've figured out."

Giorno turns his head so that his right temple is pressed into Bruno, and his face is directed towards Bruno's. He cracks his eyes open, but keeps them such that he is looking through his lashes.

"Ulterior motives?" he asks with a drawn out hum.

"My nefarious plans include getting you to take breaks, and to rest." Bruno's eyes are soft, but his words are firm. This time Giorno allows his bristling to be visible.

"I can't just spend my time messing around. Passione cannot afford its Don just disappearing, especially at this time—"

Bruno puts a finger to Giorno's lips, and it causes Giorno to tense with annoyance. "You need to take care of yourself. You can't just try to do this all alone." Giorno goes to speak, but Bruno does not move his finger. Instead, he adds another. "It's okay to ask others for help."

Giorno tilts his head back, moving Bruno's fingers from his lips. "I'm aware. Do you think I'm foolish enough to try any of this on my own?"

"In a professional capacity? I believe very little would keep you from your goals, and that you would find the best individuals for whatever jobs you need done. In a personal capacity?" Bruno trails off and, infuriatingly enough, his eyes are still soft. Giorno closes his own, and presses his head deeper into Bruno's shoulder. "I was waiting for this."

"For what?"

"For you to eventually say something that I didn't like. I knew that it would happen eventually."

Bruno's sigh is gusty. "Giorno," he says in a voice that is so understanding it rubs at Giorno's nerves, "that is how relationships work. You talk, and sometimes you fight, and you don't mold yourself to please the other person. And sometimes you help, and you let yourself be helped." A hand comes up to Giorno's head and undoes the bun. The release of tension is a tiny relief, but it is only that. "You might find yourself surprised when you let other people in." That hand scratches its way lightly across Giorno's scalp, and Bruno repeats the motion several times.

"Trish left," Giorno says into the silence. "Sometimes she visits when she can, but obviously I can't bring a civilian into our business. That would be too cruel. And Fugo still feels guilty, after all this time. He's uncomfortable talking to me." Bruno's other arm comes to rest around Giorno's waist, and he continues to pet Giorno's hair. Giorno leans into the touch. "Mista just wants to be told where to go and who to shoot. I don't blame him. In fact, I envy him. I won't take that away."

Bruno's hum is considering, and the vibrations through his chest are strong enough that it causes Giorno to open his eyes and look at Bruno again. His gaze is off somewhere, looking deep across the street.

"You'll never know unless you talk to them. And that's going to require you to open up if you expect them to meet you." He looks back at Giorno. "Not everyone will be able to understand you, especially if you don't explain yourself."

"If I was taller," Giorno says, apropos of nothing, "you could be the one resting his head on my shoulder." Bruno blinks down at Giorno. "I'd have to wear heels though, I suppose."

"Giorno," Bruno scolds. "You can't just change the topic when you're feeling uncomfortable."

"Bruno," he responds. "Every day I am confused. I don't know what I'm doing. At first I thought it was because I had become the Don at sixteen, but now it's been four years and it feels like I know even less. Why would I ever inflict these kinds of thoughts on someone else?"

"Do you think that I knew what I was doing?"

Giorno closes his eyes again. He doesn't want to hear this. It would be ruining something that he has kept close to his chest for all these years, and he knows that he will have this conversation whether he wants to or not. He forces himself to answer. "I did. You always seemed so sure of yourself, in your convictions, your direction."

"I'm confused," Bruno says like a dry summer's breeze. "All the time, constantly. And during that week when we chased the Boss? I didn't know a single thing that I was doing. None of it."

Giorno's eyebrows scrunch with the weight of his frown. "I wish that we could have been confused together then." Bruno's hand stops in its path through Giorno's hair, resting on the crown of his head. "It might have been nice, trying to figure it out together."

"Yes, it would have."

Giorno's eyes fly open as his mind stumbles across a thought. "Wait," he says with more force than he's spoken with throughout their entire conversation. "What am I doing here?"

Bruno's look is inscrutable. "I thought you knew?"

"Knew what?"

"Aren't you the one choosing to come here?"

It's Giorno's turn to blink. But before he can speak, church bells interrupt him. Loud in the night air, their rings reverberate through his body with more strength than Giorno has come to associate with bells. The noise interrupts his thoughts like a particularly unsubtle sledgehammer.

"What in the world…?" he says while looking around himself, and his eyes catch on a door. A hotel door. He hears someone knock, and he starts the uncomfortable process of unsticking his face from the back of the hotel chair, where he has apparently buried his face into its scratchy cushion. "Just a moment!" he says as he stumbles up, trying to desperately straighten the blazer he'd been sleeping in. He gets to the door and hopes that he doesn't look like a terrible mess. It is a faint hope, but a hope nonetheless. He opens the door.

"Trish!" he says with more than a little surprise.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she says while breezing into the room past him. "I've brought some food. I hope you don't mind."

"No, of course not." He closes the door behind her and checks his watch. It's a quarter past midnight.

She spills herself and her plastic bag across the tiny hotel table and groans into its wood. "The Demarchelier shoot," she says with her face still down, "went on for ages. He's working on the Pirelli calendar and he wanted to see if I have The Look." She picks up her face to catch Giorno's eyes, and then points to her own with her index and her middle finger. "So? Do I have The Look?"

Giorno meets her gaze with all the seriousness that her question asks for, and leans his weight back on one leg and puts a hand on his hip. "You look a vision, as always, Trish."

"Of course I do." She turns her body towards him and strikes a pose on the table, stretching one leg to rest on a nearby table and curling the other into her body. She brings her hands up to her face in a way that he can only imagine that she has done a million times tonight. "That was a test. Congratulations, you've passed." She slips off the table in a sleek downwards motion that reminds Giorno of his dream, despite how dissimilar the two actions are.

When she stands properly he can see the rest of her outfit. Besides the makeup that she hasn't removed from the shoot, which is the kind carefully applied to look both nude and wet, she's wearing a short satin slip dress with a v-neck in a shade of pink so soft he'd call it blush, and a trenchcoat so long it sweeps the floor with her steps. Her flats are a plain black, and Giorno feels that he hasn't seen her this underdressed in quite some time. Evidently she's been growing out her pixie cut, and her hair curls around her face is artfully tossed waves, no doubt stuck there with product.

"I found this place," Trish says, and Giorno turns his attention to her words, "that took the idea of stuffing focaccia and decided to take the corner of a pizza to use it as a pocket." She rummages through her bag and pulls out something that is wrapped in thick deli paper. "And instead of cold cuts they fill it with sauces and dishes." She hands the package to Giorno, and the paper is still warm. She motions at it before turning to the bag and pulling out a package for herself, some napkins and a few water bottles. Perrier. He should have known.

He comes over to join her at the table by dragging over the chair that he was sleeping in, and gets to the busy task of unwrapping his late night pizza-sandwich. "Polpo al sugo?" he asks when he sees the bread stuffed full of the mollusc in tomato sauce.

"I asked them for more tentacle, since I know you like eating the suckers."

Giorno does indeed enjoy crunching down on them, and his love of octopus is apparently no secret. He makes an appreciative hum, and he looks at the tentacles that are overflowing out of his pocket of pizza crust. When he looks over to hers he sees a pile of wilted greens rather than the octopus in tomato sauces that sits in his. "What did you get?"

"Misticanza alla Romana. I also got Mista some trippa, if he's still awake."

"Oh," Giorno puts his sandwich down before he can be tempted to take a bite and rises from his chair. "I can go check."

"Don't do that. Let him sleep if he's asleep." She pulls out a plastic fork to poke at the salad before spearing a few of the greens. "Besides," she says taking the smallest nibble of food Giorno has ever seen someone take, "I think he'd prefer if it was just you bothering him, especially at this time of night."

Giorno sits back down and cracks his neck, searching for if he knows why Trish and Mista are apparently on… bad terms. He can find no answer. "Did something happen? Between the two of you?"

Trish's gaze is keen, and her eyes are brighter than the lights in the hotel room. They'd be brighter than a good many things, and Giorno knows that from experience. "Nothing happened between _us_," she says with a voice as smooth as her water. He meets her gaze, but finds no answers in her green eyes. She must see his confusion in his own eyes, and responds in kind. "Two's company, three's a crowd," she says with a wave of her fork, "which is true for Mista. Doubly so when it comes to his time with you."

This is another one of those conversations that Giorno always feels so lost in. The intricacies of relationships that don't rest upon discussing dreams and plans, but feelings and emotions. He'd missed something with all those years of trying to tiptoe around his parents, and now he constantly feels like he's playing a game of catch up. Or maybe he'd always been bound to miss something, even without the situation at home. Even when he observes people with a detached eye, relationships always occupy the realm of theoretical rather than the realm of experience. He takes a few bites of his sandwich, and it is rich and wonderful. He has to slow himself down from eating it too quickly. "What exactly," he says after he's gotten over the initial pleasure of eating food, and he can't remember what he'd eaten throughout the day, "do you mean?"

Trish raises a disbelieving brow. "You don't know?" she asks, and it helps Giorno not one bit.

He shakes his head, and his hair follows the motion. He flips it over his shoulders by moving this way and that way, keeping his saucy hands as far away as possible from his hair. "Should I?"

She looks at him, chewing her fork in her mouth. "It's pretty obvious that he'd like to spend more time with you," she says eventually, and Giorno ignores the thought that pops into his head, wondering just how obvious it really is. "You know, just the two of you." He nods his head. He does not, however, _know_.

"Well," he says, and he thinks to himself that he can't change the topic, no matter how uncomfortable he's starting to feel. He won't make the same mistake twice in one night. "I'd like to spend more time with us. Mista can wait." He hopes that his eyes convey how much he's missed her, because at the moment he's not sure how to phrase _I wish you didn't have to leave_. He thinks about their little meetings on the weekends, and how she'd talk about her music or fashion, and he'd talk about his plants. He tries to give her a reassuring smile, but the motion feels wobbly on his face.

"With me? Just the two of us?" Trish asks, and her eyes are wide with shock. Giorno doesn't know why, so he rushes to reassure her.

"Absolutely." Her eyes are green, and they are bright. They are not blue, and they are not reflecting the light of passing cars. He thinks of his dream all the same. "I've missed you."

"You've missed me?" She says in a voice so incredulous it hurts.

"Yes. Is that really so hard to believe?"

She blinks at him, and then she blinks again. She rests her chin on the palm of one of her hands, and breaks the cardinal rule of no elbows on the table by resting hers on the dull wood of the hotel table. "You want to see me more? _Me_?"

"Yes," he says, a little annoyed but keeping his tone level. He's missing something here, but he doesn't know what.

"Okay," she says, and it sounds more like she's talking to herself than to him. "Okay," she repeats. She continues to look at him, chin still perched on her palm, her eyes probing. He meets her gaze all the same. "So. How have you been?"

He searches his mind for something to talk about, especially something that doesn't involve work. Eventually he settles on what has occupied his mind for this entire conversation. "I was having a strange dream right before you came."

"What about?"

"I was walking around Piramide Cestia, and then I… met a man. And we danced, right there on the streets."

"Sounds exciting," she says with a smile. "What did this man look like?"

Giorno, who has and always will be a consummate liar, feels that he cannot come up with an alternative description, not with this image burned into his mind. He decides to go for vague. "Dark hair, white suit." He waves a hand, aiming for nonchalant. "Nothing to write home about."

Trish's smile deepens. "I think he was someone to write home about. Who was he?"

Giorno takes a deep breath, and wipes his hands on some napkins. "It was Bruno," he says, and he looks at the bridge of her nose, rather than at her eyes. She looks apologetic at his words.

"I'm sorry for pressing. I didn't mean to—"

"Trish," he interrupts. "I think I should tell you something."

"What is it?"

"I don't know how to phrase this," he starts, and he does not continue.

She gives him an encouraging look. "Go on."

"Are you familiar with the concept of, of people that live as different genders? Or multiple? Or they switch, or," he takes a deep breath. "You were given one and choose another?"

She raises her free hand. "I'm familiar with the concept, yes."

"Right," he nods. "Well, I'm a man. Or, I am most of the time." He tilts his head down to look at his sandwich. "But I wasn't… I was born, and people thought I was a girl. And it just took me a little while to figure it out, but by the time I met you all," he swallows, "I had already chosen how I would present myself. Does that make sense?" Giorno does not look up, and he looks at the deep craters of the suckers on the octopus' tentacles. He wishes that he was small enough to get lost in them. Instead, a hand enters his line of sight, and grabs onto his. Trish's skin is soft, as always.

"Giorno," she says, her voice as warm as her hand. "Thank you so much for telling me." He still does not look up, and inside he sweats. "Look at me, Giorno." He keeps his face down for a moment longer before he does just that, and almost instantly he regrets it. Trish has tears in the corners of her eyes. It causes his heart to seize.

"What's wrong?"

"I have something to tell you as well," she says in a watery voice.

He grips her hand, and brings his other to cup hers between his. "What is it?"

"When you asked me if I was familiar," she says, "I know about it because I'm a woman. But it took a long time for everyone around me to understand that as well."

Giorno's jaw drops open, and he feels it happening, and keeps feeling it happen, and he can do nothing to stop it. Ringing in his head he hears _you need to open up if you want them to meet you_. He squeezes her hand tighter, and gets up from his chair. It scrapes behind him as he leans towards her over the table. "Do you mean…?" he asks in a breathless voice.

"_Yes_."

Giorno's smile is wide and genuine. It tugs at the muscles in his cheeks, and whatever fears he had have evaporated so quickly that the space left in him is quickly filled with joy and excitement. There is a sliver of confusion that he chases, and he asks his question before he can think better of it. "What about… The modelling. How do you…?" He can find no good way to phrase this, and instead hopes that she reads into what he does not say.

"Do you remember how Bruno zipped my wrist back on?"

Giorno searches his memory, and it clings on to that day in Venice. This is usually not the piece of information that he goes over, being that he had other details that he felt were more pressing at the time, but he does indeed remember. "I do. What about it?"

"Bruno could zip body parts _on_, and you know how he'd zip them _off_. Like his arms and stuff." Giorno's jaw drops even further. His eyebrows shoot up his forehead, and he stares at Trish in numb shock.

"He can… zip _off_?"

Trish giggles. "Yeah, he could. He _did_."

"But… how?"

"Giorno," she says with another laugh. "I'm not really sure, and I was too embarrassed to ask any questions. He just said that it wasn't his first time doing it."

"That's why he wasn't surprised." Giorno blurts, and immediately regrets it. That thought was firmly supposed to stay in his head.

"Surprised by what?"

"I told him, or," Giorno quibbles, and hopes that this does not sound as bad as he thinks it does, "he saw, actually. And he didn't seem fazed at all."

"He saw?" Trish asks, her eyebrow going back up again.

"I wouldn't even know how to begin describing it."

She looks at him, and her face is wonderfully open. "We're just two peas in a pod, aren't we?"

"I suppose we are." Giorno gives her hand one final pat, but then does not let her hand go. "Bruno told me that I should be a bit more open. I'm glad that it was you, Trish."

She looks away from his so quickly that he almost misses the movement. What he does not miss is how quickly her cheeks turn red. "Did he tell you to do that in your dream?"

"Yes. Yes he did." Giorno sees no point in lying so he does not. The tears have not yet disappeared from her eyes, and instead he finds that they glisten even more than before. "What's wrong?"

It takes her a few moments to speak, and she swipes at her eyes with her free hand, the one not clutched in his. "I just," she says with a voice as soft as the color of her dress, "I miss him. You know how it is." He does indeed. It is this knowledge that propels him forward, and he shuffles closer to her around the table.

"I know," he says, not unkindly but still blandly. It is a permanent fact of his state of being, and also of hers. "May I kiss you?"

Shock blooms on her face, and her eyes pop open impossibly wide. "Wha?"

"On your cheek, you silly billy." He hopes that her memory for their meetings is as long and focused as his, because if not, he's prepared to curl into bed and pretend he never said anything. A tear tracks its way down her check, and then another, and another.

She cries for what feels like a few terribly long seconds, and then she nods at him.


	6. In the way you give and take

**Chapter Summary:** It starts, as do all things concerning Bruno, with a conversation.

* * *

Contrary to popular belief, Bruno Buccellati's house is not actually in the city of Napoli. They find it in the comune of Pozzuoli, some ten kilometers east of where they started at Libeccio. The trips ends up actually being over a twenty kilometer drive, and a forty minute ordeal through late afternoon traffic. An uncharacteristic evening off, made even more unusual due to the fact that all four of them had been in the same city at the same time.

Fugo often liked to request jobs that took him far and wide throughout Italy, and Trish went even further and wider, what with her burgeoning singing career. The only one that could be reliably counted on staying at Giorno's side was Mista, and that was in no short part due to his being both the underboss of Passione and Giorno's personal bodyguard.

Regardless of the circumstances, the four of them—Fugo, Mista, Trish, and Giorno himself—made the trip. The commune of Pozzuoli has made its home the center of the Phlegraean Fields, a volcanic caldera that spits sulfurous fumes from where the earth has torn itself open. Were Narancia still alive, he might have made a comment remarking upon the sweetness of vegetables grown in ash, then he might have loudly contemplated the taste of San Marzano tomatoes grown in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, which might have led to a spirited discussion of margherita pizza. But, as it stands, the only person making these comments is the version of Narancia that exists solely in Giorno's mind, and the billowing fumaroles of the Solfatara thus remain unremarked upon. Giorno endures the car ride in relative silence.

He thinks that Mista and Fugo still don't quite believe him about having actually found Bruno's house, what with their insistence that Bruno's only property was the apartment in Napoli, and Giorno can understand and sympathize with the feeling. The process of finding the house had been no small task. Of its existence, the only words he had ever heard had been from Bruno, in a dream. One that, were he to describe it in the baldest of terms, absolutely sounds like some wishful late-night fantasy. Naked, and on the beach with Bruno, getting his hair braided. Not even on pain of death would he say that out loud. Of the physical evidence Giorno had, the sum total was a key in that closet of a room erroneously labelled an apartment, and a stack of carefully folded letters, all placed in their respective envelopes.

He had systematically followed up on each letter. Personally, and whenever he found the time to do so (and time didn't often find him, and so he had to make it for himself). The correspondence was unbelievably varied and far-reaching, but if there ever was a way to describe the shape of Bruno's influence, that would be it. There was, quite possibly, a letter about everything in that long-forgotten stack. Invitations to both weddings and funerals alike, letters from children whose pets would have otherwise met their untimely demises, anonymous thank you's, unsigned poetry, of the love letter kind and of the philosophically provocative kind and of everything else in between, artistic renditions of Bruno himself of various degrees of earnest quality… if there was a reason to write a letter, you could undoubtedly find it here.

Giorno's luck had come at the misfortune of a family. Bruno had been invited to the funeral of an older woman called Mafalda, and she had apparently been a seamstress that Bruno had worked for when he had been young, and with whose grandchildren he had been friends when he had been younger still. When Giorno had found his way to that family's doorstep, he had been greeted with the kind of warmth and affection that Bruno's name still evoked in Napoli, a reaction that Giorno understands all too well. He had provided a highly edited version detailing Bruno's fate and offered his condolences to the family, intending to stay just long enough to get the information he so desired. In the end he had been persuaded to stay for a wonderful squid pasta dinner when they had insisted just so, and with wine and time he had plied them of whatever stories they could remember of Bruno's childhood. Eventually he had asked to be pointed in the direction of Bruno's house, so as to better close Bruno's affairs. And of whatever Giorno expects to find in this house, he does hope for that. Closure. It would be nice, but he knows better by now that hoping for an end to his work, no matter how small, would be the path to disappointment. And so he doesn't hope, but there is a part of him that feels coiled, watching, and focused. It's a feeling he knows well.

He had gone back to Bruno's apartment before returning to his office or telling the others about what he had been doing, and had instead curled in Bruno's bed, which had long ago been stripped of its sheets and cleaned. The apartment building had been bought in its entirety by Passione under Giorno's hand, and refitted to bring it into the early aughts. It was now used as essentially free housing for the people in the area, with one of Giorno's only stipulations being that the residents either continue their schooling or that they find work outside of the mafia. He visited regularly to check on the orange trees around the property, and Gold Experience's touch kept them hearty and hale throughout the year, fruiting even in the depth of winter. This visit was no different. He had taken an orange with him to Bruno's room, and for an evening he was unreachable to everyone except Mista, who had eventually appeared in the apartment in the dead of night. Giorno had told Mista then, about the house. Mista hadn't believed him.

In any event, the four of them now find themselves by the Arco Felice train station, off of Via Miliscola and near Marèna beach. The breeze is pleasant and salty, but a bit too cool for Giorno's tastes, whose cropped Vivienne Westwood jacket had been worn more for the aesthetics of showing his midriff with a pair of low-slung wide-leg Oxford trousers. Both pieces are a soft cream in color, and the ecru silk is entirely too thin for this time in the late afternoon. He eyes Trish's maxi coat with no little envy, but then finds his thoughts entirely preoccupied with looking at what must be Bruno's house. Everything had been done in stone—the walkway, the path that splits off to the beach, the steps to the front door, the border around the house, the fence encircling the property… all stone. What is not stone, is plain white stucco. Tall candelabra trees have grown pressed against the house walls, and tenacious gazania bushes have grown in the cracks of the stone paths and have blossomed with bright yellow and orange daisy-like flowerheads. The prickly pear cacti, which have overrun parts of the fence, are dotted with large purple-red fruit, and Giorno passes a hand over them, causing even more fruit to burst from the cacti's paddles.

Giorno is not the first to the front door. That honor goes to Mista, who turns around to watch the other three as they poke about the tiny garden. Eventually Giorno knows that they must stop stalling, and so he too joins Mista on the stoop. The key sinks into the door with a satisfying click, and he tries not to look too smug as he swings it open. Evidently Mista must see something on his face, and takes a swipe at Giorno's head as he heads into the entryway.

When Bruno had described his house as a bit small, Giorno had taken him at face value, assuming that, much in the same vein as the man's apartment, the house must have been indeed small. It turns out that such is not actually the case. The entrance opens into a living room so densely packed that it's difficult to see the walls. The floor is lined in bluestone tile, and, of what little Giorno can see, he thinks that the trim is painted in a similar shade. The bookshelves are lined with shells and beach plants pressed into picture frames, as well as with beach stones and sea glass. Fugo, without saying a word to the rest of them, makes a beeline for the couch in the living room, which is under a massive window that faces the water, and kicks off his shoes to lie down. He throws an arm over his eyes and does not get back up. Trish and Mista take this as cue enough to head into the kitchen, which is tightly packed with an assortment of stone countertops and gas kitchenware appliances, and Giorno makes a circuit around the room. He sees a bas relief of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus in copper, and next to that there is a Padre Pio relic card. He supposes that Bruno must have been, at the very least, raised Catholic, but has no idea what beliefs Bruno must have held when they had met. He's not sure the others would know either.

Giorno had been aware that, even if Bruno had not been actively observant during his life, he was at least still observant in death, and had been buried with his father. Giorno imagines that the funds must have been provided by Passione, and Bruno's father and been interred in the walls of one of the mausoleums at the Cemetery of Poggioreale in Napoli. Diavolo's records on his own people were extensive, and among those records Giorno had discovered that Bruno had purchased a companion unit in the mausoleum's crypt space, and that he had purchased the entombment rights for both himself and his father. Bruno had been laid side-by-side his father, in their caskets. It had been a closed-casket wake.

Giorno's main association with Catholicism came in two flavors—the mandatory classes that he had by and large skipped before he had left formal secondary education entirely, and his mother's feeble attempts to please his step-father. It thus occupied a region of his mind that was oft not visited, but Bruno must have been a different story. Did it bring Bruno peace, in the end? Giorno hopes so.

He moves on, a bit further into the house and down a hallway. There is a variety of developed polaroids pinned to the walls, whose subjects are various and numerous, with seemingly no theme besides that being "something that caught Bruno's eye", if he indeed was the photographer. Each photo is accompanied by a carefully printed description, which has been penned into the white border, date also included.

Amongst the photos are images of the Solfatara volcanic crater, where thick clouds of billowing gas obscur some of the view. A particularly impressive fumarole, with large cracks and even larger craters, is a bright burnished orange. Its description is simple: _home to the god Vulcan_. Bruno had captured the entirety of Lago d'Averno from a nearby mountain, and Giorno thinks that he can understand why the Romans would have considered it the entrance to Hades, what with its position nestled in a volcanic crater, and its near perfectly circular shape. A thick grey fog hangs over the water in the picture, and Bruno had written _From hence the Grecian bards their legends make,/And give the name Avernus to the lake_.

Amazingly enough there appears to be a plethora of underwater photos, many of which feature the submerged remnants of the Portus Julius harbor, just off the coast of where they currently find themselves. Most of them were taken around 1997, and, if Giorno's math is correct, that would have made Bruno seventeen at the time. Following the photographs takes him down the hall to a staircase that disappears up into the second floor, and to a room with a closed door. Most of the rooms on the first floor are such that they don't have doors, what with them being a foyer, a living room, and kitchen, and his heart sinks when he sees it closed. He does not see a keyhole, and hopes that it is not the kind of room to lock from the inside. Unlike Bruno, they would not be able to get inside if such is the case.

It's fortunate for everyone involved then, that the door opens on the first try. He had been contemplating the limits of Requiem's abilities even before he had touched the cool metal of the handle, and inside he finds an office. Or, what Giorno supposes is an office. Whereas the living room had felt almost claustrophobic with how much was precariously stuffed into the bookshelves, this room is practically empty, and its contents are hidden away. There are a few desks pushed up against the two walls, placed together to make an L-shape on the outer edge, and a simple chair sits by the part of the table closest to the only window in the room, which faces the water, just like the one in the living room. The space appears to be… Hm. Of the sort of presence Giorno associates with Bruno, this room does not conform to that belief. It is, of course, entirely possible that Giorno is presuming too much from their interactions, and maybe all of Bruno's workspaces looked like this. Giorno doubts that very much though, because the Bruno he knew had conducted business in Libeccio, and that was exactly the sort of atmosphere Bruno brought with him everywhere. There is hardly any paperwork in this office, especially when compared to Giorno's, but maybe that can be explained by the difference in their ranks in Passione, and, logistically, the amount and kind of work that would have been trusted to a seventeen year old. But this was Bruno, and if there was ever anyone that would have been an exceptional teenager, it would have been him. It had been him.

The room, in its bareness, offers little to Giorno, and he finds himself opening drawers with idle, pointless curiosity, not expecting to find much. Which is perhaps why it is his fault for not expecting to find _something_. There are clothes in one of the drawers, which appear to be some well worn tank tops. A bit odd to keep in an office, but far be it from him to judge another man on what he keeps in his drawers. But the texture of the tank tops strike him as odd, stiff and as unwieldy as they are, and when he pulls them out he understands why. They're _binders_, and as he rifles through them, he finds that some are in better condition than others. Some look very homemade, with uneven stitching and spots where the seams don't exactly match, leaving the fabric gaping or buckling.

Giorno sits down. _Ah_, he thinks to himself. Back in Rome, when he had spoken to Trish late in the evening over their stuffed pockets of bread with octopus and salad, she had said—it had not been Bruno's first time, helping someone with altering their bodies to help ease their pains. Had Bruno been doing that for other people, here in Pozzuoli? ...Had Bruno done it to himself? Had Sticky Fingers been born from a desire to…? Bruno is not here for Giorno to ask, and he feels that absence keenly.

Giorno had spent so long, not telling anyone. He wonders if he would have said something earlier, had Bruno spoken to him. He wonders if he too would have asked for what Trish had asked. Now in his twenties, Giorno has come to terms with his body, and the modifications he could do and has done with hormones, and had resolved to never let a doctor near him again. Even if the chances of them being men like Cioccolata were astronomically low, and even though he has the power to silence anyone that might try to use this knowledge against him, the idea of going under the knife sets his teeth on edge. But Bruno… if Bruno could have been there. He wonders.

Giorno had changed his name, and had played off the name change as choosing something more suitable for an Italian. The school had never asked. His parents had never cared. He could forge his mother's signature well enough, and to the Italians in his life, his Japanese birth certificate was veritable gibberish. Due to either gross incompetence, or sheer laziness, or a combination of the two and more, they had taken his word. And with his connections made by selling the passports of tourists from the airport, he knew more than enough people roughly associated with the mafia that had the means to make forgeries. It had been almost too easy to get the papers. He puts the binders back into the desk. He wouldn't know what to do with them. He also doesn't think that he does want to do anything with them. But, in the spirit of Bruno, the man probably would have given them away to someone that needed them. Probably several someones. He closes the drawer with a lingering touch.

Requiem is out of his skin before he even knows why. He hears the clatter of pots shortly after they separate from his body, and he follows them with his heart startled into his throat. Mista calls out a short, embarrassed _sorry_, and out in the hallway Giorno can see that Fugo has sat up in his seat, searching. Trish pops out of the kitchen, and she rolls her eyes dramatically when she sees Giorno. Trish's coat now hangs down, folded over her arm, and Giorno gets to see her outfit for the first time in the day. It's… cute. She always is. Her blouse is a soft pink with ruffles down the center, and is tucked into her high-waisted black leather pants. A woman after his own heart. There's the clatter of more pans dropping to the tile floor, and she looks at Giorno again with the gaze of someone that has dealt with Mista's sporadic and confusing clumsiness over the years before disappearing back into the kitchen with a nod, leaving Giorno and Requiem alone in the hallway. He continues down the hall.

Requiem floats on ahead of him, their hands trailing on the walls, leaving faint impressions that disappear almost as quickly as they are made, and they seem to be urging him up the stairs. Giorno gamely follows them, and lets them choose what room the two of them will go to next. He doesn't have to walk far before Requiem picks, and they nearly vibrate the door out of its hinges. He has to put a hand on their shoulder before they do any damage to the building, and he would call the tilt of their head sheepish had the expression been on anyone else. On Requiem, with their wildly gyrating eyes and the downturn of their mouth, the effect is more one of feigned apologies and barely suppressed excitement. He opens the door for them.

It's a bedroom. The most prominent feature is its glass sliding doors, which open to a balcony facing west. This room also has photos, just like the hallway, but the dates are a bit more varied, from 1994 to 2000. A veritable time capsule, if Giorno's ever seen one. There are photos of water, stretching into the sky, simply labelled, _out on the gulf_. Images of the port of Pozzuoli, with all the boats docked in the early morning light. Pozzuoli shot from out on sea, the skyline of the town nestled in the mountains and volcanoes in the area. Ischia, as seen from both on the ferry, and on the island itself. On Ischia Bruno must have found vineyards everywhere, and the grape plants are arranged inside terracings of green tuff, as high as the eye can see.

The photos of the small island of Procida are all labelled with the phrase _the girlfriend of the sea_, and Giorno can see why. The coastline is jagged and steep, and a castle overlooks the tightly-packed, multicoloured fishermen houses that spill onto the wharf. Photos of the fish markets are aplenty, and Bruno has carefully labelled some truly spectacular catches. One of the specimens is a gigantic bluefin tuna with a man standing next to the great watery beast, and it hangs from a crane, ensnared in netting. Bruno had carefully penned out _wow!_ next to the description, which reads _Alessandro told me about how the boat had bowed under the weight of the tuna, Procida, 1995_. Bruno had been so young. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. Younger than Giorno had been when he had joined Passione.

But Giorno had heard the stories from Fugo and Mista, as incomplete as they were. Bruno's father, attacked on a fishing boat by tourists. Witnessing a drug deal. Getting sent to the hospital. The debacle in the hospital room, which had sealed Buno's fate at the tender age of twelve. He can see why Bruno had listened to him, over half a decade ago, after their fight. Why Bruno had described the Boss in terms of betrayals. It had been personal for him, had not occupied the same territory that it did for Giorno, for whom it was a high-minded ideal dream. Giorno still has his ideals, and certainly still has his dreams, but time and exhaustion have made their mark known on him. Giorno wonders if this is what Bruno had felt after all those years. This is the difference, he supposes, between being the ocean, or being the stone house by the ocean's edge.

In his focus on the photos, he had not looked at the room itself. He does so now, and finds Requiem in Bruno's closet, poking around at the suits and shoes. When he sees them pull out what suspiciously looks like a black lacy bralette, he turns his embarrassed attention to the rest of the room. The bed is neat, untouched. He thinks about running his hands over the sheets, but doesn't. It's endearingly nautical themed, with starfish and boats and anchors printed on the fabric, and he sees that this room is just as packed as the living room. How many hours must Bruno have spent on the beach? Did he get to visit it as much as he wanted, as he got older? In a different life, would Bruno have ever left the seaside?

Just as Giorno knows that there is a world where he died in Venice and Bruno did not, there is a world where he died in Rome and Diavolo did not… And he knows, of these infinite possibilities, there is a world where Bruno is out there right now with sand in between his toes and a prickly pear fruit in his hand, looking for shells and sea glass. Giorno hopes that in this world he is also on that beach, but he can conceive of no reason for why he would be in Pozzuoli, except for if he were trying to find Bruno's house. He tells himself that there is a world where he and Bruno met, and that they had all the time that they needed. There is a world where he is in this bedroom for entirely different circumstances.

He loosens his hair out of his braid, and it curls around his face, wisps getting into his eyes. There is a small desk and chair in the room, and he brings the chair to the balcony after opening the doors. He leans up against the wall and watches as the sun sinks over the town. He closes his eyes. He can still see the light behind his eyelids. The breeze feels wonderful against his temple, but it is still slightly too cool against his body. He sighs, and then tries to get more comfortable. It works, for a little while.

"Took you long enough to find my house," says a voice, soft and oh-so-alarming. Giorno goes from sitting to standing in an instant, and when he turns what he sees makes him go speechless. Bruno, on the bed, his form indistinct and watery in the weak light of the setting sun. Bruno's upper body is turned to Giorno, one hand resting on the bed, but his legs hang off the bed in the opposite direction. Requiem has—gone down to their knees, and pressed their head into Bruno's chest. And Bruno, with his other hand, pets Requiem's crown like they are a particularly overgrown cat. Giorno feels the phantom sensations of someone's fingers in his hair, echoed through Requiem, and stares at the two of them, uncomprehending.

"I thought," he says, still not sure what he's looking at, "you were stuck in dreams?"

Bruno smiles. "You seemed pretty comfortable there, with your head against the wall." Giorno searches his thoughts. Had he really fallen asleep that quickly? Was he awake right now? He could call for the others, to check, but if this _is_ happening, then…

"It seems that Requiem knew you would be here." Giorno says instead, keeping his voice as level as he can.

"Knew? More like… wanted." Bruno tilts his head, and even in the dark Giorno can see the movement of his hair, shifting down the side of his chin in a wave.

"Wanted?" Giorno repeats. He has a terrible feeling that he knows why Requiem had been buzzing with more energy than they usually expend outside of fights, and while it's not often that he forgets about Requiem's ability to act independently of his conscious thoughts, there are still times when Requiem acts in such a way as to make him forget about their ability. But they had not been subtle about this, had they? No, _no_, this was all on Giorno, and his own distraction.

Giorno sits back in the chair, but turns so that he can face the bed. Requiem looks happy enough for the two of them, or, at the least, he imagines that they must look happy enough for the both of them, and imagine he must, since their face has disappeared into the expanse of Bruno's chest. Bruno does not answer Giorno's question, which, admittedly, was little more than a word said with an inflection at the end of it. Instead he gestures towards his desk before returning his hand to Requiem's crown.

"I have Briscola cards, if you'd like to play." Giorno stares. Bruno stares back, an ocean of patience.

Giorno gets up. "Are there any regional rules that I should be aware of?"

"No. We'll play with just the basic rules. I'm assuming you know them…?"

"Answer me this, Bruno," Giorno opens the top most drawer and finds a pack there, "what student hasn't skipped class to play cards at the bar?"

Bruno snorts, and the force of it jostles Requiem from their spot. Giorno can hear their unhappy buzzing, but then they do the unexpected, causing Giorno to fall into a deep well of mortification in the process. Bruno seems unconcerned. "True enough," he says while doing nothing to stop Requiem, who has now crawled onto the bed to put their head on Bruno's lap, and then turned their face into Bruno's body. What Bruno does instead, is pat the spot next to him, which is closest to the pillows and opposite the side where Requiem has laid out.

Giorno tries to focus on the cards, but even they are unfamiliar. He flips one over to show to Bruno, still not having sat down on the bed. The ace of the suit of coins is usually a two headed hawk-like bird made of two golden rings, arranged in a roughly 8-like shape. Instead the ace Giorno sees is a large brown feathered hawk wearing a crown, and which has a circle cut out of its body.

"Are these different cards?" Giorno asks.

Bruno pats the spot next to him again, and Giorno has no choice but to sit down. "Once I met a pilgrim from Piacenza, in Emilia-Romagna. We got to talking and one thing led to another. Eventually we ended up swapping decks." Bruno points to the hawk. "There are a few other differences. If you look, you'll see that the batons look more like clubs." When Giorno checks, he does indeed find wooden clubs instead of gold leaf batons, as well as a tree stump, and the ace of spades replaced by a cherubic angel wielding a sword taller than their own body. Giorno looks up from the cards and sees Bruno wearing a sheepish grin. "To tell you the truth, I've always preferred this deck over the Neapolitan one."

"Bruno!" Giorno says with a fake gasp, "where's your Southern pride?"

Bruno takes the deck and shuffles. "Insulting me in my own house, Giorno?" he holds out the cards. Giorno flips the topmost one over—a knight of clubs, three points. Bruno does the same with the next card—an ace of cups, eleven points. Bruno smiles. "Looks like I deal." He shuffles the cards again, placing them on the bed, and Giorno cuts the deck. Bruno gives the cards, one to Giorno, one to himself, back and back again, until they both have three. The seventh card is flipped up—a six of coins—and the rest of the deck is placed face down, half on top of the six of coins.

Giorno looks at his hand, and finds that he has no briscola for this round, no coins in his hand. He has a three of clubs (ten points), a four of cups (no points), and an ace of swords. Giorno puts down the four of cups, figuring he'll take the loss. Bruno puts down a jack of cups (two points) and takes both cards. They take another card from the deck, Bruno picking first.

Bruno puts down a king of clubs (four points), and Giorno uses his three of clubs to take both of the cards, now at fourteen points to Bruno's two. Again, they both pick up cards from the deck, this time Giorno picking first. And on and on they go, getting deeper into the deck. The rhythm of it is familiar, but Giorno has never once played a game of Briscola with Bruno before. He wishes that he had. He knows that under different circumstances, they probably would have. Bruno wins the first game, edging Giorno out 64 to 56. Giorno shuffles, Bruno cuts, Giorno wins the deal, and so they begin again.

Over what Giorno knows to be a losing hand, he turns his attention up, and finds that Bruno had already been looking at him. It's become hard to make out the indistinct shape of Bruno in the dark, and sometimes it feels like the only breathing in the room is his own. Very soon he won't be able to see the cards. He doesn't want to turn on the lights.

"Sticky Fingers Requiem," he asks instead, looking at where he knows Gold Experience has not moved, "what do you think they would have looked like?"

Bruno hums. "Gold Experience has an arrow on their face now, don't they? And they have a crown." Bruno runs a hand over Requiem's head, as if to emphasize his point, and Giorno feels the motion through his hair. "Oh, but Chariot," Bruno says with a considering sound, an indistinct wordless sigh in the back of his throat, "they turned all… shadowy."

"Polnareff did not have control of Chariot Requiem," Giorno says, thinking of how the stand has lost itself to the singular desire of protecting the Arrow, and how perhaps their personality had been washed away in the face of the Arrow's influence, leaving behind the husk that they all saw.

"If _control_ was the determining factor of a Requiem's stand appearance, I imagine GER would look different." Giorno can hear Bruno's smile, and wishes that he could see it. "Or would you tell me that you have complete control over them?"

They both know the answer to that. Giorno looks down, and he can't see his hands, let alone see the cards. He puts them down on the bed. "Maybe Sticky Fingers would grow very large horns?" Giorno offers, feeling silly as he says it. "I mean, they already have a few on their helmet."

"Gold Experience had the shell on their head first, before the crown," Bruno says, and Giorno can feel fingers tracing down his face, and they come to rest on his cheeks, stroking there in a way that makes Giorno wish he could turn into the touch, but Requiem does not move. "Sticky Fingers could get something opposite of a helmet."

Giorno hears the swish of Bruno's hair as he moves his head, and when Giorno speaks, he keeps those thought to himself. "Like a veil?" Giorno feels the press of fingers into his cheeks before they move down his face again, and they rub his chin in small circles. Requiem must tilt their head back, because the next thing Giorno knows, those fingers have gone down to stroke his neck.

"Maybe," Bruno says after some time, and that time was filled with Giorno suffering as those hands pet their way down to the base of his throat. A thumb presses into the center of his clavicle. "Is this really what you wanted to speak to me about though, Giorno?"

"There isn't enough time in the world to discuss everything that I'd want to with you." Giorno moves the cards off to the side and puts himself into that spot, closer to Bruno. He feels that thumb press harder into his skin, and Requiem's soft buzz sounds loud in the space between their words.

"How about we start with what's on your mind, right now?"

_Besides you?_ Giorno doesn't say. He curls his fingers into the bed sheets. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to achieve our dream, Bruno."

"How so?"

"Eliminating drugs in Italy…" Giorno moves his hand, and he feels it brush against Bruno's leg, "it was naive of me, wasn't it?"

"Idealistic, yes." That thumb leaves his clavicle, and for a moment Giorno has a sense of focus other than feeling someone's hands on his skin. "But Giorno, it was that idealism that attracted me to you." Hands. There are hands cupping his chin, directly, and the sensation is not filtered through Requiem.

"I think I need some pragmatism. Dreams are all well and good, but reality…" One of Bruno's hands trails up the side of Giorno's face, and tucks a flew flyaways behind his ear. Fingers tangle into the hair at his temple, and he turns his head closer into the touch.

"Here's your pragmatism, Giorno Giovanna. There are reasons why people turn to drugs—to make money, to ease their pains, to escape life, recreation… For some people, the answer to stopping would be found somewhere in having a home, or food, and being comfortable and secure. Others need help, support. Help in the form of direction, or someone to lead them, or security." Now both of Bruno's hands are carding through Giorno's hair, and one comes to rest at the back of his head. "The issues with the foreign mafia groups, and the illegal drug trade inside the country will take time. And during that time you can help the people who need it."

"Oh, Bruno," Giorno carefully moves himself closer, pressing his side to Bruno's. His eyes have begun to adjust to the dark and the low light of the town that comes through the balcony doors. "It sounds so clear when you say it like that. So easy."

Bruno presses his temple against Giorno's, but Giorno does not feel a breath against his cheek. That knowledge hurts him more than he could have possibly prepared himself for. He does not want to turn on the lights. "Would that I could help you. But nothing will make this easy, and for that I am sorry."

Giorno turns his head and presses his cheek against Bruno's. Breathes in, breathes out. He smells nothing except for the stale air of the room. "This is help enough."

"You deserve so much more than this. You should," Bruno pauses. Giorno feels lips on the side of his face, skirting his chin. "You should be with someone that can help you, instead of chasing ghosts. There are people downstairs that love you."

In another world, Giorno knows that he is here, in this bedroom. And he knows that there, in that world, he is saying the same words. "But I want you, Bruno."

* * *

**A/N: **The grandmother I mentioned going to the hospital last chapter is no longer with us, may she rest in peace. I had to put this specific fic on a bit of a hiatus while I dealt with that, and writing about death directly was a bit much for me.

But anyways! I'm moving on my thesis proposal, and I have a committee. Good stuff. Title is taken from a lyric from Lips by xx: watch?v=GbluEc_sgeY . Really went back and forth on what it should be.

For this chapter I really focused on what kind of environment Bruno might have lived in. One of the first things I learned in Italian from my grandparents was how to pray, and more specifically, my grandparents love Padre Pio very much. I imagine that even though my family is farmers and carpenters from the North, a fisherman in the South might have raised his child similarly. It works out for me because the sanctuary of Padre Pio is in San Giovanni Rotondo, which is fairly close to Napoli. At least, closer than where my family comes from! When they exhumed his body from the crypt, we made the pilgrimage down south to see him. Because a lot of my family came state-side for the funeral, I was reminded of a lot of little cultural things that you sometimes forget when you're away from your family. One of those things was briscola, and I thought it was a shame that the manga&anime didn't have the gang playing any card games!


	7. If the Moon Turns Green

"You've kept your eyes closed, right?"

"Giorno," Bruno says with well-worn exasperation from his seat on the passenger's side, "how would you even know either way?"

Giorno turns his upper body towards Bruno, hands still on the steering wheel. "Would you taste like a liar, Bruno Buccellati?" Bruno's frown is delicate, but to Giorno, who has studied the details of Bruno's face for the past seven years, the downward curve of Bruno's lips is obvious. "If I licked you," Giorno clarifies, "would your sweat give you away?"

Realization sweeps across Bruno's features like a warm breeze, smoothing out the wrinkles of his brows and relaxing his mouth into a half-smile. "I was actually just trying to intimidate you, back then."

Giorno, who has finally parked the car—which is a very modest 2007 Abarth Grande Punto in red, if Giorno does say so himself—is able to fully turn his body to Bruno, and is somewhat overcome by disbelief. "So you, what, just wanted to randomly lick me on the tram?"

Bruno's answering smile is wide, full of teeth. "Ah, but did it intimidate you?"

_Intimidate_ is not the word that Giorno would use to describe what he felt that day, but the edge of his emotions has somewhat dulled with time, and his memory of those events has narrowed to but the finest of moments. What he remembers most clearly can be counted on one hand, but he knows he'll take those images with him to the grave. Bruno, sitting across from him on the tram. The appearance of Sticky Fingers, the way they zipped off their limbs as easy as breathing. The way Bruno had stared at him, after their fight. As with most things, his mind revolves around and converges on Bruno's eyes, and how they look when they're looking at him. A uniquely singular burning sensation. He's sure that he could die happy if he was looking at those eyes.

"Did you go around licking people often then?" Giorno asks while opening his own door, waiting for Bruno's answer before walking around the car.

"Not very often, no."

Giorno goes and opens the passenger side door. "That sounds like more than once."

Bruno laughs, light and definitely embarrassed. "More than once, yes." Bruno's head is turned towards Giorno and he finds that those eyes are indeed closed. A shame and a pity, but Giorno knows that he'll see them later. For now he takes one of Bruno's hands into his.

"Come on," he says while pulling them both along, "we're here."

_Here_ is Libeccio, their old haunt that the gang has not been able to come to in quite some time. Their ascension in the ranks over the years had been slow but steady going, and now they all were spread far and wide with their duties. And not just for any occasion, _the_ occasion. September 27th of 2008 falls on a Saturday, but Giorno had been firm in how he would be taking Bruno away from Napoli for the weekend. And so the group finds themselves _here_, at Libeccio on September 26th of 2008, a Friday and the day before Bruno's 28th birthday.

"You know," Bruno says while dutifully following Giorno, "if this was supposed to be a surprise, you're not being very subtle about it."

"It would have been doomed to get anything past you," Giorno says while opening the front door. Perhaps stereotypically, all the lights are off. "Okay. Open your eyes."

Whether Bruno does that or not, Giorno doesn't know. What he does know is that he is not quick enough to close his own eyes, and the light causes him to squint against the abrasiveness of it. Add to this that someone—and he has it on good suspicion that this someone is either Mista or Narancia or both of them—has brought vuvuzelas to the restaurant, and not only are their eyes assaulted, but their ears are as well.

"Surprise!"

"Happy birthday!"

The restaurant is packed to the gills with people here to celebrate the life of one Bruno Buccellati, a life certainly well-lived. At the forefront of the group are the usual suspects—Abbacchio, Fugo, Narancia, Mista. There is a brief, dizzying moment where Giorno feels the absence of someone so keenly it almost makes him sick with the loss of them, but it passes as quickly as it came, and his mind doesn't catch on the sensation of it. Instead he puts a hand on Bruno's lower back, feels the warmth of him through the fabric of his suit jacket, and urges the man forward to greet the rest of the group. Bruno's cheeks are flushed with the high red of embarrassment, and Giorno can see the curve of the shell of Bruno's ear, behind which he has tucked a piece of his hair. He'd been letting it grow out more, and it had been easier for Giorno to braid, now that it wasn't so short. Bruno's smile is shy and awkward, as it so often is when confronted by the force of people's love for him. Giorno has all the time in the world to get Bruno used to open affection, but he finds something… Bruno's shock, so genuine. It touches something deep inside him. Bruno eventually gets the hint and moves towards the rest of them, and Giorno goes to find the waitstaff.

Dinner is a more intimate affair than the reception party. The staff at Libeccio are accommodating as always, and their seafood is varied and fresh. They bring out tiny crostini laden with anchovies, which is a particular cross Giorno will bear considering how Bruno's eyes light up when he sees the tiny furry fish, and then those are quickly followed by a risotto di go made in true Venetian style. There is some perfunctory grumbling from Narancia about the lack of pizza, but Giorno, upon anticipating the usual course of these sorts of meals and conversations, had already requested a mushroom one for him. The others seem perfectly content with the next course, which consists of an albacore steak with a side of tomatoes and zucchini, and by the time they get to the squid salad they are feeling perhaps a bit too full. Giorno asks for the fruit and dessert to be brought together alongside the coffee, and keeps a close eye on Bruno as the man starts to list into his side. Luckily Giorno had had the presence of mind to keep his drinking to a minimum, despite being egged on by the persistent tag team duo Narancia and Mista, and finds himself in a much more sober state than Bruno, and, perhaps, everyone else at the table. Abbacchio had been too busy drinking himself to pay much attention to Giorno's imbing habits during the meal, and Fugo had been content enough to mostly watch and eat. If Giorno remembers correctly—which is really not a question of _if_ but _to what extent_—he knows that Fugo should have just completed a long stake-out mission in Rome, and had driven down specifically to make the dinner. Bruno's cheeks, which were already a permanent rosy color from the wine, burns much brighter when the waiter brings out desert.

"A plate of buccellati for Mr. Buccellati!" The man says with a smile, but Bruno frowns in response. Giorno can find nothing obviously offensive about the fig cookies besides them being served outside of the Christmas season, and he runs a soothing hand up and down one of Bruno's thighs, genuinely worried at some perceived slight. Bruno is not an unhappy drunk by any means, quite the opposite, really, and so the squinted eyes and furrowed brows is an unusual look.

"You are aware," he says in a tone that Giorno might have been able to take more seriously had Bruno's words not be slightly slurred, "that I am not actually Sicialian?"

"Bruno!" Giorno says with a fake gasp, all the while still petting a hand down Bruno's leg, "where's your Southern pride?"

"South Italian," Bruno clarifies, but takes a cookie all the same, "not Sicilian." Bruno appears to have made Giorno's left shoulder his new home, and leans heavily into it, more obviously affectionate than the two of them usually are in public.

"And what's wrong with the Sicilians?" Mista asks around a mouthful of macerated berries and cream.

Bruno's answering hum vibrates through his body, and thus vibrates through Giorno, louder than the man probably intended but refreshing in its openness all the same. "Nothing wrong with them. Just not a buccellati."

Narancia squints with considerable consideration. "But you're Buccellati?"

Giorno drinks his espresso, and immediately pours another. Fugo looks up from his plate of cookies, which he has arranged into vague circle and bracelet-like shapes. "Maybe he means he's not _a_ buccellati?"

"Right," Giorno says while getting up, which requires a delicate dance of extricating his limbs from Bruno and also drinking another espresso once he's fully able to stand up under the power of his own two feet, "let me get the bill."

He leaves the table to the absolute rousing discussing of both being and not being a buccellati, and goes to pay. The waitstaff and kitchen crew are enjoying a feast of their own, having evidently made enough leftovers for themselves as well, and their familiarity is… warm. They'd spent many years here, consolidating their power, climbing up the ranks, working towards their dream. It's been good to have the time and to actually be able to _think_ things through. He's not sure how he would have done it on his own and he's not sure he ever wants to know what it would have been like in a world where Giorno Giovanna had to do it by himself.

He stops before returning to the table, just outside of the dining room. Narancia is wildly gesticulating with a few cookies in his hands, and Fugo looks seconds away from wielding a very dangerous cup of espresso. Mista seems to be egging on Narancia, as is his way, and Abbacchio looks on with the feigned sense of detachment that Giorno knows means that he has absolutely one hundred percent certainly instigated the current conversation. Bruno sits there, back to Giorno, with his head resting in the palm of his right hand, elbow on the table. The rest of them see Giorno coming back to the table first, of course, and Bruno turns around to look when he notices the others noticing something. His smile is… had it not been so late in the evening, and had Bruno not been drunk, Giorno doesn't think he would have smiled that way with everyone else around. But, as is so often the case with Bruno, Giorno finds himself looking at that smile to the exclusion of all else. Bruno's smile reminds Giorno that he would follow this man into death, without hesitation. This is a knowledge that has already been burned deep into him, and it has filled him with a surety that he has never felt about anything else in his life. What were his dreams, without Bruno Buccellati? He feels weak with it, the desire to follow this man to the ends of the Earth. But he also feels emboldened by it, and the fact that he knows that Bruno would do the same. Giorno has to remind himself to look at the others.

"I believe that we'll be heading off for the evening," Giorno says, coming to stand next to Bruno and rubbing a hand over Bruno's back and leaving it on Bruno's shoulder. The others look none too surprised at Giorno's words, but Mista does look uncharacteristically hopeful.

"And what about… Monday?"

Giorno should have known. He waves a careless hand. "Take it off. Neither of us will be in." Bruno's protests are short lived, and he barely gets a moment to say goodbye and goodnight as Giorno takes them both out, and the rest of group shout after them. By their exuberance Giorno figures that they may go out, but for the two of them, Giorno knows that they'll be going back in. And not to their apartment, which is a much larger space that Giorno argued in favor of when he saw just how small Bruno's old one was, but to Bruno's house in Pozzuoli. He'd kept the birthday boy's gift there, after all. He didn't think he could keep it a secret, had he kept it in the apartment. _Ah_. But Bruno had beaten Giorno to the question just this morning, hadn't he?

He gets the both of them to the car in short order, and he sees Narancia run off with Mista, and the two of them wave and shout as they disappear into the dark. Where those two get the energy, Giorno will never know. Fugo and Abbacchio follow behind at a more sedate pace, but wave all the same. He waves back. Bruno pops his head out of the car when he sees Giorno waving, and this of course causes him to wave, and Giorno feels like he's wrangling a particularly energetic dog back into the car. It's a… it's a good change of pace from having to be careful around other capos, keeping their movements subtle, their plans hidden. It's good to be around the original group.

Bruno seems content enough to flick through the radio while Giorno drives, and eventually settles on a station that is playing what Giorno recognizes to be a piece that he's heard more than a few times—something by Enrico Rava, recently released the previous year with Stefano Bollani. Anyone mildly invested in the Italian jazz scene would know about Rava, but Bruno was more than just someone mildly interested. Giorno, upon learning of Bruno's deep love for one Miles Davis, had once, many years ago, surprised Bruno with a visit to Perugia, in order to attend the Umbria Jazz Festival. That once had ended up happening again and again, as a yearly tradition that Giorno would be hard-pressed to deny Bruno.

It perhaps takes Bruno so long to notice that they've exceeded the city limits because he is too busy listening to the music with his eyes closed, and Giorno thinks that the only reason Bruno opened his eyes at all was because Giorno had come across a particularly windy backroad.

"We're not going to the apartment?" Bruno asks while Giorno is navigating the curves, which twist too much to make it enjoyable while driving shift, but Giorno gets the job done, and he does it with his hand on the gearshift, and with Bruno's hand on his wrist. Giorno keeps his arm between them, even after he'd found a particularly straight stretch of road. Bruno evidently doesn't need Giorno to answer his question because he must remember the way back to his house, and he instead looks out the window at the rolling craters and volcanic edifices of the Phlegraean Fields.

But instead of simply holding Giorno's hand, Bruno seems to be searching for something. Bruno doesn't turn to look at Giorno, but his hands run over Giorno's fingers all the same. Bruno pays particular attention to Giorno's first and third fingers.

"I couldn't tell at dinner," Bruno says with a muffled voice, forehead pressed into the passenger side mirror, "but you're not wearing…"

Bruno doesn't finish his sentence, but Giorno knows what Bruno is trying to say. He had not thought about what it might look like to Bruno, and he can't get the words out of his mouth fast enough. "No, no, Bruno. I'm wearing it on a chain." Bruno makes an indistinct noise in the back of his throat, and Giorno finds himself, uncharacteristically, dizzyingly, struggling to find something to say. "I didn't know—I wasn't sure if I should wear—I mean, around everyone else?" Giorno turns his palms around to press it against Bruno's, and threads their fingers together.

Bruno squeezes Giorno's hand. "Do you not want…?"

Giorno knows, he _knows_ that now is not the time to laugh. He will not be able to explain his laughter to Bruno, at least not until later tomorrow. Not yet, not yet. He presses his lips together and squeezes Bruno back.

They get to Bruno's house in relative silence, besides the soft sound of the radio. It takes a moment to rouse Bruno from his light nap, and he grasps at Giorno's jacket, useless with sleep. Eventually those half-lidded blue eyes find Giorno's own, and through the combined glow from the street lights and the moon Giorno sees Bruno's bleary smile. The car clock says that it is already after midnight, but Giorno has it on good suspicion that Bruno won't remember if Giorno tries to wish him a happy birthday.

Eventually, they get to bed. Or, rather, Giorno and Gold Experience walk through the house and to the second floor with Bruno between them, and Bruno slides down onto the mattress with a groan of appreciation. He makes no move to get undressed, or to get under the sheets. Gold Experience turns Bruno's loafers into a pair of bright green Luna moths, and they almost immediately try to fly towards the desk lamp that Giorno had turned on to help him navigate the room. Gold Experience catches the moths in their hands before the two can fly very far, and Giorno makes quick work of his own clothes, stripping to his underwear and tossing them onto the back of the desk chair. A problem for tomorrow him. Later today him. Giorno pokes and prods at Bruno until he rolls over enough that Giorno can get him both slightly under the covers and more on the right side of the bed, rather than starfished out in the middle. One of Bruno's legs juts awkwardly off the bed, and he has both of his arms above the sheets and wrapped in front of his chest, almost as if he were hugging something. Giorno can see Bruno make a few very slow blinks, and that's when Giorno decides to turn the lamp off. Gold Experience lets go of the moths.

* * *

He wakes up to the grey-blue that he has come to so strongly associate with early mornings, and searches his mind for reasons why he might be awake. He finds his answer in the dip of the bed, and in the rustle of clothing off in the direction that he knows Bruno's closet to be in. Giorno could look over and confirm what he knows, or he could go back to sleep. The light in the sky taunts him. He throws an arm over his eyes, and stretches the other out and above his head on the pillow. He refuses to move. He will not be swayed. Giorno Giovanna will not be deterred from his dreams.

"Giorno," Bruno says, and Giorno can hear the swish of clothing as the other man presumably comes back to bed, and he can feel the mattress move under the weight of what must be a hand. "Come on. We need to buy some food." Giorno does not move his arm, and he does not move towards Bruno. He will remain firm. There is no good reason on this earth for why they need to be up and about so early. "Just think about it," Bruno says while putting his other hand on the bed, and Giorno can feel when Bruno leans over him because of the breath on his skin, "fresh bread from Ida's." Hm. A tempting thought, but not good enough to pull him from the sweet embrace of the sheets. Giorno does not budge.

After a moment he feels Bruno pull away, and he hears the clink of a belt, and a door being opened. Giorno settles deeper into the mattress. Footsteps leave the room and head in the direction of—_yes_, the direction of the bathroom, and they are followed by running water. Giorno stays there for quite some time, falling into that hazy half-state of awareness and sleep. He thinks he feels something flutter against his cheeks, but the sensation is gone before he can truly grasp it. He feels warm. At some point those footsteps return, but the sound of them confuses him in a way that makes him think that he hears knocking at the door, or the very bizarre ticking of a rather pronounced clock. It all gets a little muddled in his head. Just when his thighs begin to feel a little too hot, and just as he begins to see the impressions of bundles and bundles of sweaters and scarves in his mind, he feels—

Cold. A draft. The sheets. They've… been ripped off the bed. He moves his arm off his eyes with an agonized groan, and finds Bruno grinning at him from the foot of the bed, sheets in his hands. Bruno clearly begins to say something but then stops, opening and closing his mouth in a way that Giorno would be inclined to describe as similar to the fish that Bruno catches.

"What?" Giorno somehow manages to say, despite the sandpaper quality of his mouth. Instead of speaking Bruno comes around to Giorno's side of the bed, empty-handed after having somehow dropped the sheets. Giorno may be a bit slow in the morning, but even he can see that something is… odd. Bruno sits next to Giorno with a wordless sound of—oh. _Oh_. Bruno is. Bruno is looking at the chain. The one that Giorno had not taken off last night, the one that now sits as a warm weight between his breasts.

"It looks good on you, doesn't it?" Bruno says while Giorno watches those eyes follow the chain, and then his gaze rests on the—the ring. Bruno's father's ring. Which is on the end of the chain. It is… it is a handsome ring. At only a few centimeters wide it is thin and delicate, in a soft rose gold with ocean waves engraved on its surface. There is a single blue sapphire inset in the crest of one of the waves, and Giorno had spent more than a little time admiring it yesterday, when Bruno had given it to him.

_This_, Giorno thinks, _this I can use_. Giorno brings a hand up to card through Bruno's hair, which has just barely come to sweep his shoulders. Bruno looks at Giorno, and then looks at the ring.

"Why don't you come back to bed?" Giorno asks, and he brings his hand to trace the curve of Bruno's ear. He sees it then, that brief flicker in Bruno's eyes, the flutter of his lashes. Giorno almost has this, he knows it. The question is whether to push, or to pull back, if only a little. To let Bruno come to him. Giorno makes his decision when he sees Bruno move, just slightly. Giorno applies his fingers to Bruno's head, lightly scratching wherever he can reach under that hair. He pays particular attention to the back of Bruno's head, hoping that he gets the idea to come closer.

Bruno does indeed, it seems, get the message. His head jerks forward in a stuttering motion, and it causes his hair to swing back and forth. And then he—bends down, and goes all the way to, to kiss the ring. He presses the ring into Giorno's flesh with his mouth, and Giorno feels the exhalation of a long breath through Bruno's nose. And Bruno stays there, lips half on the metal, and half on Giorno's skin. Something causes Bruno to scrunch his brow. From the profile Giorno can't see the full effect, and a single blue iris looks at him, turned as far as it can go to the corner of Bruno's eye.

"If you don't get yourself out of bed," he says after moving his mouth off of Giorno but still just above the ring, "Sticky Fingers will do it for you."

Giorno groans with elaborate distress, tossing a hand over his eyes and attempting to push his head even further into the pillow. It doesn't work, and he can feel when Bruno pulls away. He takes a peak from under his hand and sees that _yes_, Bruno has indeed moved, and looks ready to get off the bed. Giorno sticks his other arm out, vaguely in the direction of Bruno's body.

"Alright then, help me up." The act of sitting up is enough to remind Giorno why he doesn't want to leave bed. His head throbs, and he sags into Bruno's shoulder as his vision gets blurry and black around the edges. One of those days, then.

Bruno brings an arm around Giorno's waist, and it's a steady, warm weight. It grounds him a little, and it helps him through the disorienting pain. "Do you need me to get your pills?" Bruno asks into the crown of Giorno's head, moving so that both their legs are hanging off the side of the bed, facing the balcony.

"No, no," Giorno says with his words muffled by the fabric of Bruno's shirt, "I can get them myself. What's the weather supposed to be like?"

Giorno feels Bruno's considering hum. "Clear, high of twenty-two. It'll be cooler on the water."

"Could I get away with no shirt?"

Bruno laughs while getting up, moving a bit slowly as Giorno stays up under the influence of his own muscles. "I don't think anything I could say would stop you. I'd bring a shirt though, just in case." Bruno stops at the door, half in, half out. "How long do you think you'll be?"

Getting off the bed takes not an insubstantial amount of effort, and Giorno sees Bruno make his way back into the room from the corner of his eye. He waves a hand. "An hour." Giorno gives Bruno as exasperated look as he steps further into the room. "Don't worry about me, birthday boy, I got this." _And that way you won't see it..._ Giorno resolutely does not look at the desk. Bruno wavers for a moment, clearly indecisive, and Giorno shoos him until he gets the hint.

Only when Giorno is sure that Bruno has gone downstairs does he move towards the desk, and Gold Experience is one step ahead of him, buzzing so strongly that the floorboards begin to grow into dwarf whitebeams. They spread so rapidly and thickly that Giorno is forced to stand in place, and they quickly sprout taller than his head, densely covered with pink flowers and red oval fruit. He clicks his tongue at Gold Experience, but they seem unrepentant among the shrubs, and leaves quiver where they pass by.

"Very subtle," Giorno says while trying to make his way to the desk. He gets a faceful of petals for his efforts, as a branch swings back his way as he tries to move. "He's going to notice that you turned the bedroom into an arboretum," Giorno says in a tone he hopes is appropriately scolding and not fond, "and then he's going to blame me." Gold Experience stares back with their green scarabs for eyes, silent in the face of Giorno's reprimand.

Giorno huffs as he finally gets to the desk, and finds that it too has sprouted into a few shrubs. "Oh, don't look at me like that." The drawers resist Giorno, evidently forced shut by the roots of the plants, if the wood had not already become a plant itself. After a few more unsuccessful jostles he looks back at Gold Experience, who has floated to his side, evidently not constrained by things such as gravity, by virtue of being the ghostly manifestation of Giorno's soul. They place a glowing hand on the desk before Giorno can stop them, and silver thistles grow from the wood, their spiny leaves catching Giorno's arms as he is too slow in moving away. The flower bulbs push into his face and he jerks back as they burst open, and they reveal their silvery-white ray florets. And in the center of one of the flower's heads—a box, tiny, delicate, black. Smaller than the palm of his hand. Giorno snaps it up.

"Are you going to turn the room back?" he asks while trying to make the arduous trip out of the room. Gold Experience gives him that same scarab stare. "Okay," Giorno says while shaking a few whitebeam fruits from his hair, "could you turn this into a gull? And let it out through the balcony." Giorno could, of course, simply harness their shared power himself, but Gold Experiences seems to be in… a mood. Best to let them do what they want. The box is turned into a beautiful Audouin's gull in his hands, and it idly pecks at his fingers with its short red bill, and he gets a wonderful view of its black wings and the string of pearl white tips as it ruffles its feathers. It looks at Giorno as it preens and hops around on its grey-green legs, but flies off the minute Gold Experience opens the balcony door. Giorno has no worries that it will be back.

He gives the room one more sweeping look as he gets to the door. "You're really going to leave the room like this?" he asks while searching for Gold Experience, and eventually finding them cocooned in the closet in a bed of leaves and vines. "I'll tell Bruno that this was all you." Gold Experience does not budge, nor do they move to acknowledge his words. In all honesty, Giorno wishes that he could do the same. He goes to the bathroom instead.

The bathroom routine is much the same as usual. Grope for his bottle of Imitrex in the medicine cabinet, bring the toothbrush into the shower, and stand under the spray while waiting for the pills to kick in. Eventually he gets out after wrangling his hair into submission and cleaning. The usual. It's only when he gets back to the bedroom does he realize his dilemma, as he drips water onto the floorboards and stands there in a, quite frankly, insufficient towel. The bedroom. The closet. Their clothes. Gold Experience has not moved from their cocoon. Giorno debates the merits of just going downstairs in the towel.

Gold Experience must be somewhat sympathetic to Giorno's distress, and they send a few turtle doves his way. The first transforms into one of Bruno's bralettes, which is not acceptable outerwear no matter how Bruno tries to defend it. Giorno's seen the tan lines. They would be terrible to try to even out. It seems the rest of the doves are also Bruno's clothing. There's a white short-sleeved button-up and the squid-patterned board shorts that Giorno has seen many a time, and then even more of Bruno's bralettes. Giorno looks at Gold Experience.

"Sending more of them will not make me wear them, as I'm sure you are already aware." Giorno sends the birds back, minus the shirt and shorts. Instead of turning them back into clothes, Gold Experience keeps them as doves. They've well and truly lost the bedroom, it seems. Giorno hopes that Bruno didn't forget anything. Towel returned and now dressed, Giorno goes downstairs.

He knows that Bruno has made coffee before he sees the other man, because he can smell it all the way down the stairs. And indeed there are two cups out, the moka pot is set aside on the counter, and a bag of Misura apricot cornetti is on the table.

"Did you go to the store?" Giorno asks, and Bruno looks up from where he seems to be carefully examining the filling. "What's wrong?"

"I could have sworn these things had more…" Bruno says, considering the pastry in front of him. He looks back at Giorno. "And no, I didn't go out. Here." The ghostly form of Sticky Finger's hand separates from him, and zips open the side of Bruno's chest. From inside Sticky Fingers pulls out a bag of Bauli chocolate croissants. They hold the pack out to Giorno, who has come by to pick up the moka. Giorno pours a shot for the both of them.

"Milk and sugar?"

Bruno shakes his head. "Don't have any in the house."

"What about a little bit of honey?"

Bruno frowns while taking his cup. "No, Giorno."

"No to there being no honey, or no to honey in the—"

"No." Bruno takes a sip.

Giorno finishes his own cup in a couple of sips. Pours himself another. When he offers the pot to Bruno, he shakes his head. While he's still sitting down Giorno has a clear view of Bruno's head, and of his unbraided hair. Giorno runs a hand through it, still standing up.

"Want me to put it up?"

Bruno hums. "If you want to."

"You and I both know that you'll be complaining about hair in your face the minute we're out on the water. Do you have a hair tie?" Bruno's brow splits open as Giorno speaks, and when he peers down and into the zipper space he sees an assortment of ties and clips. He picks a small black elastic and goes about shaking out Bruno's hair. "French okay?" Bruno gives a wordless noise of assent and finishes his cup. He straightens into Giorno's touch. For all that Bruno has begun to grow his hair out it's still short, and only a few strands hang below the nape of his neck when Giorno gets there. It's a relatively quick process, as compared to braiding Giorno's own hair.

Sticky Fingers puts a chocolate croissant in Giorno's hands once they're free, and Bruno turns around in his seat. "I've got towels and the fishing equipment in the car. We can go whenever you're ready." Giorno stuffs the croissant in his mouth, and shakes the pot around to hear how much coffee is left. He decides not to drink a third shot. He tries to speak around the pastry but all he makes are unintelligible noises. Bruno understands him anyways. "We don't need to rush." He points to the clock above the oven.

The time that Giorno sees causes him to very nearly choke, and he absolutely drops his croissant, which Gold Experience catches before it can hit the floor. "Ten after eight?" he says between gasps, trying to dislodged whatever's caught in his throat. "Just when did you get us up?"

"Little before seven."

Giorno pours himself a third cup and drinks it without tasting it. Gold Experience changes the remains of his croissant into a Cleopatra butterfly, and it flutters off with its gold and orange wings. The traitor. They probably left the bedroom as a mess of plants.

"Okay," Giorno says with a fortifying breath. "I'm ready. But—" he waves a finger in front of Bruno's nose, "we're getting bread and cold cuts."

* * *

Ida had been all too happy to give them bread—rounds of ciambella baked with fennel and thick slices of pane di matera. Pugliese specialities, despite being in Campagnia. Not that either of them were going to complain. Ida must have passed word to Andrea, because by the time they walk to the deli and the mountain of a man sees them, he shoves more meat than they could possibly have needed into their arms. Andrea seems to think better of it and then takes the meat back, but then instead returns with a basket from one of the backrooms. The basket seems to have acquired more than they had been holding just seconds ago. Giorno sees a container of spicy 'nduja and slices of sweet capocollo, as well as a healthy mound of prosciutto di Parma.

Andrea shoos them off like a dog that's begged and then overstayed its welcome, and they set out to see Cinzia and Gavriella, the new owners of both the cheese and wine shops in town. _New_ is a bit inaccurate. Both their fathers had been the owners of the shops when Bruno had been a child, and now the women were both work and life partners, and had combined the two into one. Very often they would try to keep Giorno and Bruno talking about all manner of things, but their greetings this time were positively brusque as they hand over a bottle of Negroamaro wine and an impoverished selection of three separate cheeses. Giorno doesn't even have time to be nosy about the selection as they're being ushered out. It seems that everyone knows what day it is, and everyone remembers that Bruno used to go fishing with his father. Now that tradition includes Giorno, and they take themselves and their overladen basket to the docks after getting back to their car.

At the docks they find themselves greeted by one particularly enthusiastic gull. Giorno recognizes it as the one that Gold Experience had made earlier that morning, and tries to play it off as the gull merely being interested in their food. The grin Bruno shoots Giorno tells him that his gull was none too subtle, and Bruno's words tell Giorno everything that he needs to know.

"Usually," Bruno says while unloading the fishing equipment, "these guys like to feed out at sea. And at night."

Giorno smiles back weakly. "Maybe it just really wants some bread?"

Bruno goes to tuck his hair behind his ears but finds that he can't, due to Giorno having braided his hair. "Say that I believe you," Bruno says while keeping his hands up by his face, "why haven't you given it some food then?"

The gull becomes one of the best fed gulls in the area for all of about a second before the others see what Giorno is doing. Normally Giorno would be delighted by a group of birds flocking to his side, but a group of morning-hungry gulls is just courting chaos. Giorno tosses a few pieces of bread and cold cuts as far away from him as possible, and hops onto their modest sized bay boat. Bruno is doubled over with laughter, towels on the ground by his feet.

Giorno looks at the basket, then at Bruno. Then back at the basket. He picks up a fairly large piece of ciambella. Bruno, who is still laughing, does not see when Giorno waves the piece in his hand.

But the gulls do.

A few of them had held back from the ruckus, and now they follow Giorno's hand with beady-eyed, laser focus. He lobs the bread.

It falls with supernatural, divine precision onto the towels and between Bruno's flip-flop clad feet. The gulls descend. Bruno shrieks. A few of the other fishermen lagging behind get a good chuckle at the spectacle—Bruno pinwheeling his arms out, both trying to avoid kicking the birds but at the same time trying to move away. With people around them, Bruno cannot use Sticky Fingers to escape. And escape he does not. He stands there, a veritable human bird perch as the gulls hop on his shoulders and feet, trying to get at the bread. He turns his baleful blue eyes to Giorno. The Audouin's gull flies back to Giorno's side, and preens itself on the bow of the boat, suitably satisfied with its breakfast. Eventually the others get the idea when Bruno starts shaking his limbs, trying to gently move them away from his feet and off of him.

One makes its temporary home the crown of Bruno's head, and the others peck around for whatever crumbs they may have missed. The magnitude of Bruno's glare is softened by the fluffy chest of the gull nesting on top of his braid. Bruno rethinks shaking the towels the minute he sees bread bits bounce off, and the renewed interest of the birds. He hops onto the boat as well, just ahead of the flutter of wings.

Giorno looks at the gull still on Bruno's head. "This vessel is only sea-worthy with three passengers, I'm afraid." It looks at him placidly, unmoved. "I'm sure if the captain would allow it though…"

Bruno huffs. Tilts his head down a little. "See if it'll stay on the towels."

The bird flies off when Giorno goes to pick it up, but leaves its mark in the form of a few feathers. Or, rather, more than a few, if the state of Burno's clothes is any indication. Giorno wipes a few of them off of Bruno, who eyes the remaining gull on the bow warily.

"The feathers match your aesthetic," Giorno says a bit desperately, trying to stop Bruno from looking too closely at the bird. His eyes don't even so much as twitch towards Giorno. This calls for drastic action. Giorno plucks one of the longer feathers off of Bruno's shirt and waves it in front of the man and by his nose, much as Giorno would if he saw a cat walking around and a conveniently placed cat's tail plant. Bruno blinks at Giorno slowly. And then he sneezes. Loud enough that he startles the gull, who flies off in an uncoordinated panic. Bruno's entire face scrunches with the force of his frown.

"Doing all this is just going to make me more curious, you know."

"Sure," Giorno says while tossing the feather into the water. It's done its job, and a very good one at that. "But the gull is for later."

Bruno's sigh is full-bodied and deep. "I'm calling in a birthday favor. You can get us out on the water yourself." He smiles at Giorno's spluttering. "You've watched me enough times, haven't you?" Giorno accepts his new job with as much grace as possible. The birds seem to have moved on from their crumby breakfast of champions, and Giorno gets the towels with as little fuss as possible. Most of the fishing equipment is still by the car, and Bruno watches from where he's settled under the hardtop cabin. Giorno looks at where the boat is tied to the dock, and then back at Bruno. He ever so slowly moves to untie the knot connecting the boat to one of the pilings of the dock, and he watches Bruno watching him all the while. Bruno's smile does not change. Giorno has no idea if he has to do anything else, but feels like he vaguely remembers something about shoving off. So he gives the boat a little shove. It does not move, besides to bob up and down with a few soft waves. Giorno pushes the boat harder. And it seems to move forward, but that could just as easily be Giorno's imagination. He looks up and gives Bruno a pleading smile. Which seems to work, as Bruno waves Giorno onto the boat. In a few minutes they're off, with not a gull in sight.

The Gulf of Pozzuoli finds itself a part of the greater Gulf of Napoli. Were they to go west, they could indeed return to the city, but instead they cut further east, away from the Phlegrean Peninsular. It's not very far to get to Procida, which is a relatively small island that is situated between the Italian mainland and the island of Ischia. From the port of Procida they can see both the mountainous terrain of Ischia and the Monte di Procida off the mainland, as well as the vast stretch of the Tyrrhenian Sea. When they near the port on the island's north eastern shore several other fishermen wave and yell out at them, evidently remembering Bruno, and also now remembering to greet Giorno as well. They see the man that Giorno recognizes as Alessandro, a man he associates more with the photo of the enormous tuna in their bedroom, rather than from any experience of actually meeting the man himself.

Alessandro brings his flybridge fishing boat to the side of theirs and both Alessandro and Bruno greet each other with hearty claps to their shoulders. Alessandro turns his gaze to Giorno and seems to be at a bit of a loss before Giorno moves forward to give a couple of cheek kisses.

"You must be him then," Alessandro says once they've gotten their greetings out of the way. Giorno tilts his head in question, but doesn't voice his thoughts. "The blonde that Bruno's mentioned meeting in the city so much."

"Well," Giorno says slowly, "when you phrase it that way," he winks at Bruno, "I have it on good authority that Bruno's met many a blonde in the city."

"Has he now?" Alessandro laughs, deep from his belly. "I think it must be you though. He's described you as… Oh, I've got it, hair as bright as the morning sun, and eyes like when the sea is green. Isn't that right, Bruno?"

Bruno flushes a deeper and more complete red than Giorno has ever seen him turn, and he opens and closes his mouth a few times before fruitlessly looking between Alessandro and Giorno. "I don't, I don't know if I phrased it _quite_ like that—"

"Of course you didn't!" Bruno looks relieved for a nanosecond before Alessandro continues. "You said it much more flowery-like." Alessandro points a damning finger at Bruno, and turns his bright brown eyes to Giorno. "This boy gets all poetic whenever we ask him about this man he said he met. From the way he talks about you, you'd think that you hung the moon right there in the sky."

Giorno moves a hand to cover his mouth, but he knows that they must both still see his smile. "Well, if I've hung the moon then I was only able to do so because Bruno hung the stars first."

Alessandro slaps Bruno's back with enough force to jostle him forward, and Alessandro's eyebrows practically pop off his face. "A charmer too! You never mentioned he was such a smooth talker, Bruno."

"I'm positive that I've mentioned how charismatic he is," Bruno says while still hunched over by the weight of Alessandro's hand, clearly trying to defend himself and his reputation, which is shredding itself into tatters before his very eyes.

"Charismatic?" Giorno asks, hand still by his mouth. Giorno watches Bruno realize what he said by the way his eyebrows scrunch, and by the way his lips frown in resignation.

"This is a hole of your own digging," Alessandro says with another firm pat to Bruno's back before moving a bit away from the two of them on his own boat. "I best be letting you boys get to it. Seems like you've got a long day ahead of you." Alessandro's wink is long and exaggerated, and Giorno wonders why he's never met this man before. He's delightful. Giorno knows this is a man filled to the brim with stories about Bruno in the awkward fumblings of youth. Giorno waves as Alessandro's flybridge pulls away, and he turns to Bruno with a grin.

"I like him."

"No," Bruno corrects, "you only like him because you want to know what else he has to say."

"I'm pretty sure that's how relationships work."

Bruno sighs. "At least the fish won't have anything to say."

"I'm sure if they could they would." Giorno waves a hand. "Just imagine how many people they've seen while they've been swimming by. Do you think they ever stop to watch us, like we watch them?"

"Yeah," Bruno says with a shrug while he starts the engine. "Plenty of times I've seen animals just stop and look, or come around to investigate. Why? Do they… say anything to you when you make your creations?"

Giorno comes to stand in the cabin by Bruno's side. "Not as such. I only really get emotions, sometimes. Like an awareness, but nothing that's ever concrete."

Bruno takes the boat even further east, and they zip off among the waves. He keeps them in sight of land, but they set anchor somewhere a good distance out. Giorno keeps his shirt on for Bruno's sake, but un-buttons it all the way down for his own sake. He lays out a towel on the bow and settles down for a nap while Bruno sets up his fishing rods and lines, and the sun is bright and warm and rising ever higher in the sky. It's a wonderful morning.

Giorno's awareness narrows down to the orange-red that he sees behind his eyelids, and the gentle rocking back-and-forth of the boat. He feels sweat bead on his skin, and the breeze across the water cuts him, cool and salty. He hears the whir of the line as Bruno casts his bait, and the clink of the reel as Bruno spins the handle. At some point Giorno hears the flapping of wings, and Bruno's answering _hello_. Giorno wonders if it's the gull. He sinks into his own head with well-worn familiarity, the floating embrace of both having thoughts, and having those thoughts be beyond his reach. Eventually he drifts back to the surface for too long, and finds himself waking up. He has to turn his head away from the sky in order to be able to see.

When he gets up, it's only to grab a water from the cooler and to sit next to Bruno at the stern. The sun seems to have stopped at its highest point, and Giorno has only picked up a little color from his nap. The two of them had already spent more than enough time on the beach for Giorno's tan to be deep. He offers the bottle to Bruno, who shakes his head. When Giorno looks over he sees that the ice box is empty of any fish, and then turns his gaze to Bruno with a questioning noise. And then he stops, when he sees that Bruno has very nearly bitten through his bottom lip, and that it is bright with blood.

"What's wrong?" Giorno asks through the thin fog of lingering sleep, and Gold Experience shimmers just beneath his skin as he reaches for Bruno. Bruno puts a hand up, stopping Giorno.

"Can we talk?" he asks instead, completely ignoring Giorno's question. Giorno nods. "Okay. So maybe I'm overthinking this," Bruno says while turning around, and Giorno can see the full extent of Bruno's teeth on his own lips, and some of the indentations are deep and painful-looking, "but last night. When you didn't wear the ring to dinner. And then in the car, when you—you didn't answer me." Bruno's eyes are squinted, and for a wild moment Giorno isn't sure if that's because of the light reflected off the water, or because of something else.

"What are you talking about?" Giorno asks with no little confusion, trying to remember the car ride to Bruno's house.

"I asked you if you were sure—if you wanted—"

Giorno is not entirely sure what, exactly, Bruno was about to say. But he has a good enough guess anyways. He grabs Bruno's hands, even the one that is still holding the fishing rod, and _squeezes_. "Whatever it is you think I don't want, I need you to know that I _do_." Giorno catches sight of the gull as it hops around, free as can be, right there behind Bruno. Giorno gives Bruno a stern _wait_ as he gets up, and Bruno watches as he reaches out for the gull. Gold Experience is the one to "catch" the bird, but they really just transform it back into what it once was. A box, small, black, delicate.

"What are you—"

"Bruno Buccellati—"

The two of them pause, looking at each other. Bruno's eyes track down to Giorno's hands, to where he presumably sees the box.

"What," he says in a strangled voice, "is that?"

Giorno flounders for a bit, trying to decide if he should kneel or not, and the longer he flounders the more aware he is of how he _still_ hasn't answered Bruno, and really, his eyes are very blue with the sun and the water, and—

"Bruno," he repeats again, licking his lips. He has no idea where he would even start with. Any of this. All of it. "You know, I hid this in your house specifically because I didn't think I would be able to hide it if I kept it in the apartment or the office. And I can't even begin to tell you how upset yesterday—"

At Bruno's alarmed look Giorno steps into Bruno's space, and squeezes Bruno's hands again as best he can with the box in his own.

"I love you, and I love your ring. And yesterday I really wanted to be able to give you _your_ ring, but it wasn't in the office, and it's not like I could exactly run off to go get it, and I was just… So surprised, and I didn't even know how to, how to _react_, and—"

"Giorno," Bruno cuts off, "we're idiots, aren't we?" Bruno's eyes are crinkled at the corners, and his smile is so relieved it causes Giorno's chest to ache.

"We might be," Giorno says.

Bruno stands up and goes to move closer, but finds his motion interrupted by his fishing rod, which is now oddly clutched between their hands. He secures it behind him, all the while keeping one hand on both of Giorno's, and on the box. Finally free, he steps closer to Giorno. Close enough that their hands are caught between their two bodies, and that they can feel not just the heat of the sun, but the heat of their skin.

Bruno shakes his head with an embarrassed glint in his eyes. "Sometimes I worry about… Just how much your ideas speak to me. And that maybe how well we understand each other is really just… something that I'm imagining. Or maybe what I'm feeling, I'm… projecting. Or that maybe I'm trying to force something, or that we're going to come to an impasse that we can't cross, or," Bruno swallows. Closes his eyes for a second or two, and then looks back at Giorno. "I'm going to try to talk to you more, because I think sometimes we get comfortable in not speaking because we… Understand each other. But obviously, that's going to lead us to something like this."

"I should have just told you yesterday—"

"No, Giorno. I know you well enough by now to know how you got distracted by how upset you were at your plan not working, and your tendency to keep things bottled up when that happens."

"And _I_ know how much it bothers you when I start to hide like that."

"I think we sometimes get ahead of ourselves, don't we? With how well we know each other." Bruno takes a step closer, and Giorno has to move his arms awkwardly to make space for the movement. Bruno takes that as cue enough to take another step, and because Giorno suffered the cruel pubescent fate of reaching his final height before he met Bruno, he has to tilt his head slightly up to look Bruno fully in the face. Some of Bruno's hair has escaped the braid, and it falls in wispy curls at his temples, dark and soft.

"I love you," Giorno blurts, and he can feel the heat rush to his cheeks. He's… he's already said this once before, in this very same conversation. But with Bruno looking down at him, even though he knows that Bruno knows, it feels heavy in his mouth.

"Giorno Giovanna, I love you too." Bruno smiles. "And I'd also love it if you showed me my ring."

Giorno can feel his embarrassment ever more keenly. "Rings," he mumbles, and he tries to look away from Bruno's eyes but finds that he can't, all because of how close they are.

"Rings?" Bruno repeats. Giorno nods. Bruno's smile curves around his cheeks even more. "Well," he says slowly, "don't I feel special? Show me my rings, Giorno."

What happens next, Giorno is not entirely sure. They have to disentangle their arms in order for Giorno to even show Bruno the rings, let alone hand them over, and for some reason Bruno refuses to step back and make space. What Giorno does see, is the box dropping out of their hands. He watches it fall in numb, distant horror, like a spectator inhabiting his own body with no control. He doesn't even hear it bounce off the floor of the boat, the noise too soft to be heard over the rush in his ears.

Bruno seems to have none of the delay that Giorno is currently experiencing. He lunges at the box and, in doing so, pushes Giorno back and out of the way. The box gets dangerously close to the water, but Bruno somehow has the wherewithal to unzip his hand at the wrist and throw it, and both the box and his hand fall harmlessly back into the boat.

The two of them sit there, looking between Bruno's unzipped hand and each other, before Giorno experiences the giddy sensation of stress giggles. He experiences them high and in his throat, and a bit like wheezing cough. They appear to be infectious enough, and soon Bruno also starts giggling, and the two of them fall into each other, Giorno with his neck over one of Bruno's shoulders, and Bruno with his chin on top of Giorno's head. Giorno gets startled out of his giggling by Bruno's remaining hand wandering over his skin, and it comes to play with Giorno's chain before moving on. The fingers skim over his stomach and leave goosebumps in their wake, and Giorno is about to ask what Bruno is looking for before—

The _cheat_. That _traitor_. Bruno's hand runs over Giorno's left hip, and Giorno's stress giggles are replaced with laughter. Bruno _knows_ that Giorno's ticklish there, and he tries to twist away from the sensation, but Bruno proves to be unrelenting, even while missing his other hand. Bruno clearly has experience in tickle attacks where Giorno does not, and presses his advantage by trying to keep Giorno in place with his own body. Unfortunately for Bruno, Giorno has Gold Experience, and clothes are not, by any definition, alive. Where once Bruno had been wearing a shirt and shorts he now wears a wonderful outfit of a flowering climbing hydrangea, and it does its best to lock Bruno's limbs in place as Giorno shuffles away.

"This is very cruel," Bruno says plaintively, trying to wiggle out of the plant's grip, "especially to do this to your fiancé-to-be."

Giorno is almost swayed by Bruno's pleading look. "Don't act like you can't get out. I've seen you zip into and out of weirder situations."

"With the use of my limbs generally unimpeded, yes."

It is only once Giorno has acquired Bruno's other hand and the box that he takes pity on Bruno and returns the hydrangea to clothes, and also has Gold Experience try to repair Bruno's chewed-through lower lip as best they can. Bruno zips his hand back on at the wrist and, after a few experimental stretches, opens the box. Giorno has stared at the rings more than enough times to know what they look like. The yellow gold had eventually won out, despite how much he had liked the white gold, and Giorno had consoled himself by sticking with the black gems. The engagement ring has a single black Akoya pearl with a black diamond on either side, while the wedding band has those same black diamonds around the entire circumference of the ring. Giorno can feel himself sweat the longer that Bruno doesn't say anything.

"I had wanted to go white and black," he says with a vague gesture at Bruno, turning his head away to look at the water, "and I think I drove the jeweler mad trying to import a pearl from Japan with a midnight blue overtone. You know," Giorno waves his hands again, feeling completely and entirely self-conscious, "to match your hair."

Giorno looks over only when he finally hears Bruno move, and it's to find Bruno looking at the rings individually, having put the box down on his seat. "They're engraved," he says while turning them over. "With the same thing?"

"Yes," Giorno confirms with a nod. Bruno looks at Giorno.

"'_This is happiness'_?" Bruno asks, in a voice that sounds suspiciously wet and congested.

Giorno is very aware of what the engraving says, and so he nods again. "Yes."

Bruno is squinting at him again, and his eyes are thin slits of bright blue against everything else. "Giorno Giovanna," Bruno says while slipping first the engagement ring onto his right ring finger and then the wedding band, "I love—I love the rings."

Giorno looks down at his own hands, and they are bare. Bruno's ring still hangs on his chain. "I was worried. Since I didn't have anything from my family to give you."

Once again Giorno feels Bruno step into his space, and once again he finds himself unprepared for it. Physical closeness—he always finds something startling about it, when he's awake. Even when he's anticipating it—

"You should wear your ring."

Giorno brings his hands up to play with his chain, and then to pull it around his neck so the clasp is in the front. "You could… put it on for me," he says, finally looking up. He finds that Bruno is already looking down at him, and Giorno gets a truly spectacular view of Bruno's eyelashes, which are thick and black, and suspiciously wet and clumped together at the corners of his eyes. Bruno opens the clasp, slips the ring off, and then closes the clasp. He looks at the ring in his hand for a long moment, and then back at Giorno, for an even longer moment. Giorno tries to keep the shake out of his arms as he puts his right hand out, but he knows he hasn't succeeded when he sees his own shivers travel through Bruno's hands when they hold his own. It seems that the elder Buccellati had larger hands than Giorno, because the band is a bit loose on his finger, but not terribly so.

"We'll have to get that fitted," Bruno says, still holding Giorno's hand and rubbing both the ring and Giorno's skin with his thumb. The ring is still just as beautiful as the first time Giorno saw it late yesterday afternoon, sprung on him just before they had left for Libeccio.

It is, at this moment, that Bruno's fishing rod loudly declares its presence, with its line wildly unspooling from the reel, and the rod itself groaning dangerously under the weight of whatever has taken the bait. The noise startles the two of them badly, and for some reason Bruno shoves Giorno behind him, as if some stand is about to attack them from the watery depths of the sea. When nothing immediately pounces at them, Bruno marginally relaxes, and Giorno sees the motion ripple through Bruno's shoulders. The fight with the fishy beast lasts only for as long as Bruno has line, and there is barely enough time for Bruno to grab a hold of his fishing rod and to start the process of reeling in before the line snaps. The two of them look at the dangling, frayed end in a sort of forlorn silence.

"Well," Bruno says.

Giorno gives Bruno's empty ice box a considering look. "Maybe we should just buy something at the market?"

Bruno continues to glare at his broken line. "Maybe."

"We could get some squid? Maybe an eel?"

Bruno's stare is sharp. "Unless you want to support the overfishing of eel—"

"No, like, farmed eel?"

"Farmed," Bruno repeats. "Absolutely not."

Giorno puts his hands up, palms towards Bruno. "I'll just let the birthday boy decide. How about that?"

Bruno's sigh is deep and suffering. Even more of his hair has come out of his braid, presumably from when they were rolling around, giggling like school children. He definitely looks harried. Bruno starts the engine after packing his equipment, and Giorno puts together a few sandwiches from all the food they have stuffed into the cooler. They eat their cold cuts while Bruno takes them back to Procida and its fish market, and Giorno finds himself constantly distracted by the way the light catches on Bruno's rings.

* * *

They had ended up buying fresh oysters and squid at the market, but not before they had been accosted by all the fishermen and vendors that recognized Bruno. And once one of the men spotted Bruno's rings, then it was well and truly game over. Especially when a few of them recognized the ring on Giorno's hand, and they all seemed to try to tell the two of them the story of how many fish Bruno's father had to catch in order to save up enough money to buy it, and there was an air of genuine excitement when they asked about the pearl on Bruno's engagement ring. It seemed that none of them had been familiar with Akoya pearls, and Giorno became the de facto expert on Japanese pearls, despite his knowledge only extending to their prices, and the difficulty of shipping exactly what he was looking for to Italy. He couldn't exactly hide a trip to Japan, after all.

This had thus naturally devolved into a discussion of Japanese seafood, of which Giorno knew more about, but graciously allowed Bruno to regale them with tales of visits to Japan, and of the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. It was, apparently, this knowledge that endeared Giorno to the fishermen, and it seemed that they were all delighted by Bruno's ability to find someone that appreciated a good fish as much as they did. A few of them bemoaned that Alessandro was still out to sea, but the rest of them seemed excited at the prospects of being the first to tell the man, ahead of the two of them themselves. Giorno understood then, just how everyone seemed to know everything, and accepted that he wouldn't need to exactly repeat the story anymore. Convenient, but maybe also concerning. He found that he didn't very much care, and decided that he'd use the atmosphere to his advantage. All it had taken was a well placed hand on Bruno's lower back, and a mention of birthday presents and dinner at home for the fishermen to let them go with minimal jokes, and well-meaning slaps to Bruno's back. It had all been exhausting, and it had only been early afternoon. They had returned home to Bruno's house a little later, and Giorno had deemed it an appropriately acceptable time to start cooking. If he had to wait any longer, he had bemoaned, he would have fallen asleep on the couch. Bruno had taken the threat with the full seriousness that it deserved.

And now they sit outside, with their grilled squid and a salad composed of the fronds of agretti and late summer tomatoes. They eat the oysters straight from the shells with lemon juice, and they watch as Gold Experience ripens more than a few prickly pears until they are red and sweet and practically falling right off the cactuses with obvious intent. Giorno has to stop them from plucking the fruit with their bare hands because, stand or human alike, the hairy thorns would sink into their skin just as easily as needle-sharp glass.

That was a lesson Giorno had learned from experience, the first time Gold Experience had seen the ripe fruit. Bruno had learned that lesson as a child, and he had badly hidden his laughter while pulling needles out from under Giorno's fingernails. As an act of concession Bruno had told Giorno about the time his father had watched Bruno pull olives straight off the tree and try to eat them, and how Bruno's father had stood there with his hands on his knees, gasping at Bruno's sour and betrayed expression. The story had marginally made Giorno feel better, who had still been feeling the consequences of Gold Experience's actions.

Eventually they pick a few prickly pears (very carefully, and with tongs) and stoke the flames of their wood grill. The fire burns the glochids on the outside right off, and they see little sparks fly off, and they hear the accompanying popping sounds. Once all the spots have blackened and the fruits have cooled, Sticky Fingers zips the skins right off, and all they're left with is the purple-red flesh.

The beach is a short walk from the house, and they load more fruit than they can possibly eat into Gold Experience's waiting arms, who immediately takes it upon themself to closely inspect each and every one. This is despite the fact that they have done so on nearly every other occasion presented to them before, but who was Giorno to deny them. He does, however, rather pointedly not look back when he feels the faint flicker of their shared power, which they suspiciously use after Giorno spits out a few seeds.

Between a few bites, Giorno turns his attention from the sand and the sea to Bruno. "Has this been bothering you for a while?"

"Has what been bothering me?" Bruno asks after a little delay. Giorno seems to have interrupted Bruno from a particularly succulent fruit, and Bruno looks back at him with both his hands and mouth completely covered in juice.

"The… lack of communication."

"Giorno, that was just me being upset about a misunderstanding, and not a," Bruno nearly loses his fruit with the force that he jerks his hands, "long-term issue."

Giorno drags his feet across the sand and his words across his tongue. Neither are particularly comfortable sensations. "It was a good idea, when you said that we should… vocalize more."

Bruno takes his time answering and eating his fruit, spitting out a few more seeds. "The biggest problem here, really, was myself. And how I overthought the situation. If I had just waited instead of jumping to conclusions—"

"But actually, what if I hadn't given you the rings today? What then? What would have happened if you had just let yourself stew, and never brought up how you felt, and you just kept thinking that I would do the right thing, or that I really understood you, if my actions said another thing?"

"I can see your point," Bruno says, expression soft, "but I don't think—no, I _know_ that you wouldn't do that. You've always come back to speak to me, and to get my opinion on things. I don't see how this would be any different. Eventually you would have noticed how I was acting, and eventually you would have brought it up. The only reason you didn't notice this time was because of your own stress." Bruno takes another fruit from Gold Experience, as casual as can be, evidently unbothered by the turmoil his words have caused in Giorno's stomach.

"And what if we were in a situation where the stress was constant? Unending?"

"I'd say that I wasn't the only person in this relationship to have a tendency to overthink."

"Bruno," Giorno says with a click of his tongue, tossing the pulpy remains of the seeds in his hands down the beach, "I was being serious."

"And so am I. I think that whatever the situation, we'd be able to understand each other. These past years have convinced me of that."

Giorno shakes his head. "Not everything has to be about life or death, or about instinctively understanding each other under the pressures of some bizarre circumstances of fate. We should be able to have normal conversations, and normal problems. If you're upset about something, you don't have to… we can talk about things, you know? And… it's not like I'll always be right. Or do the right thing, or say the right thing. Or even be able to understand you perfectly."

"Trust me, of that, I am aware." Bruno says while walking further along the beach, and towards the sea. The sand feels wet under Giorno's toes. He cringes at the tone of Bruno's voice.

"Let's not… bring up past missions right now."

Bruno splashes some water with his feet. "This is bothering you a lot, isn't it?"

"You were—you _bit_ through your lip because you thought I didn't—because I made you feel—"

"I know something now, that I didn't know then." Bruno says with a smile. "I doubt we'll have that same misunderstanding again." Bruno lifts his right hand, keeping his palm facing himself, and wiggles his fingers. _Ah_. Even as the sun slowly sets with the end of the late afternoon, the light catches on the rings like flares. "Speaking of, how much did these cost?"

Giorno turns his head away to look at the sea, and watches the waves roll in, gentle across their feet. "In all honesty? Cheaper than your birthday lingerie."

"Birthday… lingerie?"

"There was a spread in British Vogue about Belgian designers, and there was a piece about Carine Gilson. You seemed particularly taken with her work."

For a moment, Bruno says nothing. Instead he bends down to reach the water, and washes the prickly pear juice off his fingers in the sea. He cups some to his face, but is less successful there. "How does it look?"

"About as good as it's ever going to look, if you insist on washing off in the sea."

Bruno gets back up, and wipes off whatever sand has gotten on his cheek, but misses most of it. Giorno goes to swipe off the rest of it, but stops when he sees his own sticky hands.

"The lingerie," Bruno says while still rubbing his face, "these are the ones made from the Lyon silk and the Chantilly lace? The ones that are handmade in an atelier in Brussels? _That_ lingerie?"

Giorno nods. "The very same."

"Giorno!" Bruno says with a gasp, and Giorno can't tell if it's delighted or scolding. "That must have cost thousands of euros!" Giorno makes a wordless noise of agreement. It had certainly been expensive, especially when he couldn't choose between the set in blue, and the set in red. If Bruno particularly liked them… Giorno felt that he could be persuaded in buying more.

"I was told that they would look sublime with a pair of trousers and a blazer, so you can even wear them as outerwear, if you wanted."

Bruno goes to run a hand through his hair, but evidently has forgotten that it is still in the braid that Giorno put it in just this morning, even if it is no longer as neat. He tugs the rest of his hair out, and puts the black elastic back into a zipper space just above his brow. "So where is it then? In the bedroom?" Bruno asks, turning towards the house.

"Yes, in the closet—" _The closet_. Giorno remembers, and he _sees_ the bedroom in his head, as he looks out across the beach. Gold Experience had done just what he had feared. They had taken all the seeds and the prickly pears and had caused fully-formed cacti to stand tall and proud in patches so dense you practically couldn't see through them. Bruno seemingly ignores this new change in the terrain to go back towards the house, kicking up sand as he walks away. "Wait!" Giorno calls out. Bruno does not stop, but Giorno honestly hadn't expected that to work.

Giorno hopes with little expectation that Gold Experience had reverted the bedroom before they had left the house, but he feels that the state of the beach is indication enough for how the room probably looks. Giorno takes his time going back to the house. He circles the newly grown cacti, and keeps a respectable distance from their thorns, but still close enough to appreciate them. He wonders how people will react in the morning, when they come down to the beach. He's sure it will keep the town suitably occupied gossiping about some midnight gardener.

When Giorno eventually gets back to the house he takes his time washing himself off in the kitchen sink. He scrubs under his fingers, where the purple-red flesh has stained his skin, and he ends up wiping his entire face of salt and sweat and juice, just to have something to do. He even contemplates just how much of himself he can clean in the sink, before he decides that he can only realistically stall for so long. He brings a hand towel with him as the proverbial white flag and goes upstairs, and Gold Experience bubbles up hot and insistent to the forefront of his consciousness. He tamps them back down with a few strongly worded thoughts.

Bruno is standing at the door to the bedroom, as Giorno thought he would be. The door is wide open, and there are the pink flowers and the red fruit that Giorno saw earlier, and he can even hear the coo of the doves that Gold Experience had made from Bruno's clothing. Bruno looks at Giorno, and then gestures at the room.

"What happened here?"

"I'll have you know that this was all Gold Experience."

Bruno hums, and tucks his hair behind both ears. Giorno offers the hand towel. "And why, pray tell, did Gold Experience do this?"

To the great and unfortunate embarrassment of one Giorno Giovanna, this was not the first time Gold Experience had performed excessive displays of creation, and the reasons and results were too varied and diverse for Giorno to easily summarize. He supposes that it makes sense that his stand would inherit some of his… _willfulness_, but then it would also stand to reason that maybe they would inherit his sense of decorum and self restraint as well. Such was evidently not the case, if one were to consider the times Gold Experience had tried to keep Giorno and Bruno in bed by turning the sheets into a thick blanket of vines, or even the times when they had transformed all the clothes in the house into tiny little ladybugs that, while beautiful, were very keen and very good at hiding. And then there is also this morning to consider, where Gold Experience had completely changed the landscape of the bedroom, as well as just a few moments ago on the beach, and their attempt to introduce an incredible number of cacti into the Pozzuoli ecosystem.

But stands. They are the soul manifested into the physical. Gold Experience is fundamentally a creature that desires what Giorno desires, and expresses themself in the only way they know how. Giorno knows this. He _knows_ this.

"I was thinking about your rings," Giorno settles on, after Bruno's eyebrows have already started to inch up his forehead, "and then they turned the room into an arboretum."

Bruno nods with grave solemnity, wiping his face with the towel, cleaning it better than he had with the sea water. "And I suppose you expressed to them just how upset this would make me?"

"But of course."

"Maybe I should speak with them?"

Gold Experience's awareness skitters across Giorno's skin, their excitement disproportionate for where Giorno thinks this conversation is going. "Sure," he says, with no little suspicion. Gold Experience separates from Giorno with what he can only describe as a _roll_. It moves through him in waves, from his limbs and working inside, and Gold Experience materializes only after they have melted up and out of Giorno's skin, shimmering into existence with an inappropriate amount of showy flair, despite their audience of two. Or maybe _because_ of their audience of one, if Giorno were to be removed from the equation. They don't even look at Giorno as they float around, their green scarab eyes and their attention fixed onto Bruno.

"I hear this is all your work," Bruno says with a sweeping gesture to the room just beyond the door, and at all the dwarf whitebeams and silver thistles enjoying the breeze from the balcony. Gold Experience's nod is vigorous, unrepentant in their shamelessness. They float ever closer to Bruno, who waves them over. "What are we going to do with you?"

Apparently answering his own question, Bruno kisses Gold Experience, right on their forehead. Giorno feels the sensation, filtered and second hand, on his own skin. And then Bruno keeps kissing Gold Experience, on their cheeks, on their eyes, their nose, the top of their head, everywhere he can reach. Gold Experience's soft _wry _is faint, but damning. Giorno fumbles around, trying to find some indignation in his body, but the feedback is. Even dimmed, it makes his head light.

"Won't this just—" another kiss, this time to the space between Gold Experience's eyes, "encourage them?"

Bruno's eyes catch Giorno's from around Gold Experience. "Ah," he says with a smile, "but these are disciplinary kisses."

The disciplinary nature of the kisses is more than a little dubious, and called into serious question when Gold Experience starts to seed Bruno's shirt with tiny plants, but when Bruno asks them to fix the room, they go to do just that. They leave the flowers in Bruno's shirt, who seems more curious about them than anything else.

"What are these called?" Bruno asks while lifting his shirt up to get a better look. Giorno moves a bit closer in order to take in the mat of thick green leaves, and the numerous white-blue five-petalled flowers.

"Blue star creepers," he says after admiring the plant. "Good for groundcovers."

"The color is nice."

The sound of several somethings falling startles them both. Gold Experience has gotten to the desk and the silver thistles, which had been made from drawers. They clatter to the floor as Gold Experience returns them to wood and then moves on. Giorno walks over to the desk, but when he turns he sees that Bruno has not left the doorway, and is instead tracking Gold Experience's movements across the room. Giorno goes back to trying to fix the desk, and to rearrange all the knick knacks and papers that have now been strewn about, trying to give his hands something to do. Intellectually he knows that Bruno is not actually… annoyed by Gold Experience's… outbursts. But there is still a part of himself, no matter how small, that finds itself embarrassed at just how _noticeable_ Gold Experience's actions are. It is, after all, much harder to ignore a forest of plants than it is to ignore—Well. He taps the wood of the desk with his fingertips and focuses on the _click click click_ that they make.

_You're twenty-three_, Giorno thinks to himself. _You're allowed to take space._ He hasn't seen his mother or step-father in seven years, not since he joined Passione. But, still. Still.

He feels when Bruno walks towards the closet by the shift of the air behind him, and turns to look at the rest of the room. Surprisingly the floorboard looks good for what used to be a bunch of dwarf whitebeams, with only a few bralettes scattered on the floor, and he goes to pick them up. He hears, rather than sees, Bruno open the closet, which must no longer be a cocoon of vines. He also hears Bruno's inhale, and the whistle of his breath, which is terribly loud in the room.

"Which did you want me to wear?" Bruno asks from somewhere between their clothes, and Giorno can't decide if he wants to go over or not. He has already seen the lingerie, and has looked at it more than a few times. In the end he had bought more in the blue than in the red, but he knows to which set he is partial. All of the pieces are Chantilly lace-encrusted Lyon silk, with the lace at the décolleté and the hemline. Giorno had been particularly appreciative of the fauvette design, but had also been swayed by the florals, which had been a variety of poppies and bellflowers. In the end the nightingales had won, and he loved how their wings transitioned into the scalloped edges.

Bruno pops out of the closet holding the red camisole and the matching floaty shorts. "I have a feeling I know which ones you liked."

Giorno looks at the clothes, at the bright garnet silk, and the burgundy lace. "You did notice that I bought more of the blue, didn't you?" Inside, Giorno sweats. Refrains from smoothing out the front of his shirt, no matter how much he wants to.

"The slip dress and the kimono are very nice," Bruno says with a nod, "but these… they would be much more noticeable if I wore them outside, wouldn't they? Very… eye-catching." Bruno shakes out the camisole, which has a deep plunging v neck lined in lace, and strappy pieces of silk that would just barely keep it up.

"I got those exact same pieces in blue," Giorno says, and he desperately hopes that he sounds nonchalant. Had he been younger, he imagines that his voice might have cracked. Small mercies. He'll take them while he can.

Bruno's smile is knowing. "I'll wear them on Tuesday." He goes back into the closet. Giorno swallows. Now he can run his hands down his shirt, what with Bruno unable to see him do so, but gets distracted by the ring on his finger, and plays with it by rubbing his thumb over it.

"What," he says with a swallow, "do you mean like—"

"Outside, yes. I'm thinking a blazer, white, three-quarters sleeve. High-waisted pants, also white. I could tuck the camisole in, just below the v neck."

Giorno hears the rustle of clothes while Bruno speaks. The outfit Bruno describes is even better than the one Giorno had pictured, which might have been a potentially unambitious pair of black slacks and a suit jacket.

"Flats or heels?" Giorno asks, knowing when he's been caught. It would be ridiculous to even pretend that he hadn't imagined it.

"Flats," Bruno says with a considering hum, still inside the closet. "I think the lace is the same color as the Dior ballerina slingbacks. You know, the ones embroidered with a white ribbon?" Giorno does indeed know the ones with the white ribbon. He had seen them before, sitting in the closet, relatively untouched. He hadn't been able to remember if he had ever seen Bruno wear them before, and he had mourned the fact that they didn't share the same shoe size.

Bruno steps out of the closet.

He's wearing the slip dress in the seafoam blue silk, and the delicate cream lace dips low on his chest and curls around the hem and up his left leg. The lace falls more than a good handful of centimeters above his knees. Giorno had particularly liked the asymmetry of the lace, and how it crept further down the torso on the side opposite of which it crawled up the hem. The straps on the slip dress are thinner than the ones on the camisole, which is a truly remarkable feat of fabric engineering.

"It feels lovely," Bruno says while swishing the dress back and forth with an idle hand. It looks lovely, as Giorno knew it would. The force of how attractive Bruno is, is a blinding one indeed. Giorno could look at Bruno for years and still never get used to it. He _has_ looked at Bruno for years—at the darkness of his hair, and how it falls around his face, at Bruno's eyes, which are almost always crinkled with a smile, at the way he moved, with such purpose and conservation of movement, at the way he breathed and existed—

"You look lovely," Giorno says, feeling that unique sense of embarrassment that always comes whenever he even begins to approach describing his visceral attraction to Bruno. He has the good sense that Bruno understands what he does not say, but, after their conversation on the boat… he knows that Bruno deserves to hear it, rather than to always be forced to intuit it, or to read between the lines, or—Bruno deserves this, at the very least. To know. To be sure. To be told.

"I would," Giorno blurts out before he can get too comfortable in the quiet.

"What?"

Giorno does not turn his head away, no matter how much he wants to. He knows that he has very little control of what his face looks like in this moment. "I would," he repeats, pressing his thumb hard enough into his ring that he's sure it will leave a mark, "if we could. If you wanted?" Dancing around what he wants to say is probably not making it easier for Bruno to understand him. It is, however, a great deal easier to think something, rather than to say it. Bruno sniffs, and Giorno feels his eyes snap back into focus, with little conscious effort on his part.

"Oh, Giorno," Bruno says. Bruno is in Giorno's space almost as soon as he's done saying Giorno's name, and his hand is cupped around Giorno's cheek. It's a steadying touch. It's an empowering touch.

Giorno swallows, and keeps his eyes on Bruno's, "I want to be your husband."

Bruno smiles at him, softly, sweetly. "And you are my husband, as I am yours." Bruno's smile is the kind of smile that makes Giorno feel like he's fifteen again, and weak with a desire that he never thought that he'd be allowed to have.

_Husband_, Giorno thinks to himself. An impossibility for the both of them. First, to even be recognized as men, and then second, to be married as two men. This is the thought that finally causes Giorno to try to turn his head away from the embarrassment, but Bruno's hand keeps him from doing so. Instead of letting Giorno pull away, Bruno pulls him closer, and then he pulls them both to the bed. The sheets are still rumbled from the morning, and from Gold Experience's touch.

"We're going to lie here, in bed, together." Bruno brings his other hand up to Giorno's face as well and rubs his thumbs across Giorno's cheeks. The touch is light, barely a whisper of sensation across Giorno's skin. Giorno can feel the cold press of metal into the underside of his chin. "As husbands."

"Technically," Giorno says while tilting his head up a little, and Bruno takes it as the invitation that it is, and runs one of his hands down Giorno's neck, "our rings are on the wrong side."

Bruno pushes them both onto the bed with a laugh. "Not if we're trying to make a statement, they're not." Giorno makes an interested noise, but focuses more on shuffling backwards to find the pillows than on saying words. Bruno watches him all the while, and when he finds the pillows Giorno stretches out onto his back, like a particularly pleased cat. He stretches his arms out over his head, and Bruno takes that as his cue to join Giorno and he falls into the space next to Giorno with a satisfied sigh. For a moment the two of them simply enjoy the sensation of laying down in bed, and it's enough to make Giorno shut his eyes. This is evidently not enough for Bruno, who begins to move not too soon after settling down. Giorno opens one eye to watch Bruno, who reaches up to grab Giorno's right hand with his own right hand.

"There are certain communities that use the right over the left," Bruno says while moving himself a bit closer to Giorno, and bringing their clasped hands down to his face so that he can kiss his father's ring on Giorno's finger.

"And by wearing them like this, we'd be signaling to those groups?" Giorno asks while closing his eye again.

"Yes."

"I suppose that settles that then."

Giorno feels every breath Bruno takes, by virtue of the fact that Bruno has yet to move their hands away from his mouth.

"Any idea about what we're going to eat tomorrow?" Bruno asks.

Giorno groans in the anguish that only one still full from dinner can experience. "You're thinking about food? Now?"

"I'm actually thinking about what's going to happen when we go into town tomorrow," Bruno says, and Giorno can feel Bruno's smile on his skin. "But then I started thinking about shopping. So. How does cacciucco sound?"

"Bruno," Giorno says while feeling his stomach roll at the thought, "I love you, but I can't eat fish for the third day in a row."

"Can you truly be my husband, if you say no to fish?"

Giorno opens his eyes. Bruno is indeed smiling, and it curves around his face beautifully. "I suppose it wasn't meant to be. You understand, don't you?"

"I must admit to being truly heartbroken. To do this on my wedding bed? Have you no shame?"

"You're the one that's shameless," Giorno says, and he tugs their clasped hands over to his own mouth, and kisses Bruno's rings. He starts with the pearl, and then makes his way as best he can around Bruno's ring finger, and misses metal for skin more often than not.

"Of course I am. After all, why would I need to be ashamed?" Why indeed.

Giorno feels the pulse of it before he's fully conscious of the meaning of it, and he watches their rings start to turn leafy and green before he can reign the power in. Bruno sees the change as well, and, although his smile does not shift, Giorno can see the smug glint in his eyes.

"It was all Gold Experience, was it?"

Giorno can feel his face grow hot, and tries to hide behind their hands. If he can't see Bruno, then the reverse should also be true. Absolutely. "I stand by what I said."

"And for tomorrow, what would _Gold Experience_ like to eat?"

"Something light, maybe spaghetti in a red sauce. I'm sure Gold Experience would very much enjoy that."

"Well, if that's what Gold Experience wants," Bruno says while throwing a leg over Giorno's hips and pulling their clasped hands to be more between the two of them rather than pulled over to one side, "I suppose we could indulge them, couldn't we?"

Giorno's answering noise is distracted as his eyes track the movement of the Bruno's dress. It slips, coy and blue, high up the swell of Bruno's thigh, revealing an uneven tan line and a thick smattering of sun spots, the likes of which can be found elsewhere on his skin, but nowhere quite as thick as on his legs. Giorno had always wondered if the sun spots were a bit like freckles, which might multiply under the sun on certain people, but Giorno had never seen anything similar on Bruno's arms, which were almost permanently darker than the rest of him throughout the year.

"You're ridiculous," Bruno says with a huff, and he props himself up with his left arm, using his vantage point to look down at Giorno. This is, of course, the perfect angle for Giorno to look up at Bruno, and so he does so with barely concealed pleasure. Bruno's hair has swung forth on either side of his head and hangs down, blocking the view of anything else but for his face. "I _know_ that you've seen my legs before. I mean, Giorno, how many times have you seen me naked over the years?"

"Not as many as I could have," Giorno says while looking at the way the dress falls down and over Bruno's chest, and at the way Bruno's leg is still swung over his own body.

"Not everyone has your nudist tendencies."

Giorno reaches with his free left hand and presses it into Bruno's clavicle, running his fingers across the bone. He feels the goosebumps bubble up where he touches, and he dips his hand down Bruno's sternum and towards the scalloped edges of the lace. "You'll have to blame my father for that."

"Ah yes, the evil vampire from Victorian England." Bruno leans down, bringing his nose to Giorno's. It forces Giorno to turn his attention away from the blue of the satin to the blue of Bruno's eyes, and Bruno's hair falls onto Giorno's face in soft curls. "I'm pretty sure that in the pictures the SPW Foundation representative showed us, Dio was wearing latex."

"If you had looked at the photos that Mr. Joestar had taken, you would have seen that my father was lounging half-naked in every one of them. I'm pretty sure he only put clothes on when he had to go outside. And even then…"

"Mr. Joestar, your… nephew?"

"The one and only eighty-something year old man that we met."

Bruno settles back down into the bed with a sigh and a shake of his head, keeping his face near Giorno's on the pillows. "How exactly did he get these?"

"Apparently his stand can take photos of people that share his blood."

"And I assume that the act of stealing the body of your step-brother counts as sharing blood with said step-brother's ancestors?"

Giorno moves his left hand away from the lace at Bruno's chest back over his head, stretching it out. He leaves his right hand where it is, still clasped in Bruno's. It is, however, starting to feel clammy. "Is it really any more bizarre than whatever else we've seen?"

Giorno can see Bruno's eyebrows twitch with barely suppressed disbelief before he answers. "I suppose not."

Giorno looks at Bruno rather than answering. He doesn't think that he could ever get tired of seeing this face, and he hopes that he never wakes up on the day that he does. At this distance Giorno can still see the marks of Bruno's teeth against his bottom lip, the worst of which was healed by Gold Experience, but not completely removed. There is a scar that follows the bridge of Bruno's nose and cuts through one of his nostrils, faint but still visible to Giorno, who had not been able to heal the wound in time to prevent it from leaving a mark. Thankfully it had been more superficial than anything else. Giorno finds his gaze irrevocably drawn back to Bruno's eyes, as it always is.

"So," Giorno says, smiling when he sees Bruno's pupils focus on his own, rather than roaming around his face, "eyes as green as the sea?"

Bruno squints at Giorno. "This is coming from the man that imported a pearl from Japan because he said it was the same color as my hair."

Giorno feels that keen sense of embarrassment again, but it leaves as quickly as it came. It would be impossible for it to stay long, considering the situation that he finds himself in. For whatever he can think of concerning himself and revealing the depths of his feelings, he can think of an equal number of times of Bruno doing the same. It is this knowledge that keeps him from shying away, and it is this knowledge that has him maintaining eye contact with Bruno. He's unable to keep it for long though, what with how Bruno begins to move not long after.

"What's wrong?" Giorno asks as Bruno moves with deliberate care, who shifts his body over Giorno's, amazingly without getting up. Bruno reclaims Giorno's left hand from where it is resting over his head, and with the hand acquired, Bruno settles back down.

"My leg was getting warm," Bruno says while bringing Giorno's left hand down to place it on his thigh, "and your fingers are always cold."

Giorno has the evidence of the heat of Bruno's body beneath his palm, and Giorno knows that his hands, at that moment, are not cold. Bruno's thigh is incomparably warm to anything else. Once again Bruno has settled down so that they are face-to-face, right hand in right hand, and Giorno rubs his thumb over a particularly large sunspot on Bruno's inner thigh. He feels the rise and dip of the stretchmarks on Bruno's skin, and he strokes his palm up higher.

"Oh," he says when he feels lace underneath the dress, "you're wearing the shorts as well?"

"What did you think I was wearing? Nothing?" Giorno ignores the question for petting higher on Bruno's leg, and eventually reaches Bruno's hip bone. "You know that I'm not ticklish there."

"I'm not trying to tickle you," Giorno says as he curls his hand around Bruno's side. He's beginning to feel the effects of the day on his eyes, and he can already feel the way his body is sinking into the bed and the embrace. He skims his palm down and under Bruno's thigh, and keeps his fingers there, pressed into the warmth of it. "Do you mind if I," Giorno pauses, trying to figure out a way to phrase this. His mind has narrowed down to the tactile sensation of feeling Bruno's body against his, and he's been made slow with the experience of touch.

"What do you need?"

"The weight," Giorno says, and he pushes his palm ever so slightly up on Bruno's thigh. Bruno seems to get the message, and that thigh gets placed further around Giorno's own hips, and the rest of Bruno's body follows. Bruno's weight pushes Giorno down into the mattress, with only their chests not pressed together.

"Is this good?" Bruno asks, and he's gotten up again with his left arm propped up on his elbow, looking down. Giorno nods. "Going to fall asleep on me?"

"In a little bit. Talk to me?"

Bruno finally releases Giorno's right hand as he lies back down. He uses his now-free arm to pull Giorno closer and, because of the way their bodies are now curled around each other, Giorno's face fits into the side of Bruno's neck. "Do you remember the jazz festival we went to during the summer?"

"Probably not as well as you, but yes." Giorno stops fighting the gumminess of his eyelids and closes them. "What about it?"

"I'm still surprised that Alicia Keys was there. I wasn't expecting that."

Giorno hums. "You liked that Stefano Bollani played a set, didn't you?"

"Yes, the one with Caetano Veloso," Bruno says, moving his chin a bit to rest it on top of Giorno's head. "His new album is very good. I particularly like the samba pieces. You can really tell when he was inspired by Brazilian blues as well."

"Oh, this is the album," Giorno says while turning his face more fully into Bruno's neck, "the one that you have both the vinyl and the cd of, right?"

"That's the one—Carioca."

"I remember," Giorno says, voice muzzy and partially hidden by Bruno's neck, "after each song. You'd say _this is my favorite, no, wait, this is my favorite_."

Bruno's laugh is noiseless, and shakes in his chest. "It's a good album. The piano… the saxophone solos, all of it. If only we had a record player here. We should have packed them."

"I'll remember next time, promise."

Bruno pushes his nose down into Giorno's hair. The angle must be uncomfortable for him, but he stays there long enough for him to get used to the puffs of his breath. "I could always try humming it."

It is very warm. The weight of Bruno on top of him is grounding. "You could."

And so Bruno does. Giorno falls asleep to the sound of Bruno trying to recreate _Luz Negra_ with only his vocal cords.

* * *

When Giorno next opens his eyes, it is still relatively dark. His face is buried in the pillows, and the blankets are awkwardly tangled around his legs. It is almost uncomfortably hot, and he realizes that he went to bed still wearing the shirt and shorts that Gold Experience had picked out in the morning. The buttons elude him. His fingers slip over them, and no matter how hard he tries to focus, he cannot unbutton his shirt. From somewhere in the part of his brain that must communicate with Gold Experience he feels an awareness that sharpens and then coalesces into his hands in the form of something shiny and golden, and then his shirt is off his body and in the air, a dozen or so moths flying away to hide somewhere in the room. It takes him a bit longer to do the same with his shorts. Coordinated limb movement seems to be beyond Giorno at the moment, and that category just happens to include reaching down further than his waist. There is the terrible sensation of pins and needles, and he tries to wait it out without rocking back and forth in the bed too much. He doesn't want to wake Bruno up, just because he fell asleep with his arms in an award position. Eventually that sharp fuzziness passes, and he is able to reach his shorts. Those get changed into moths as well. It seems that neither he nor Gold Experience are capable of being too creative at the moment.

The next task at hand is to escape the sweaty embrace of the sheets, which refuse to untangle from his legs, no matter how much he tries to jostle them about. Which he attempts to do gently, because he knows from experience that he has a tendency to kick. Giorno considers it a rousing success when he gets the sheets down to his knees, and that he didn't succumb to his desire to change them into moths as well. Body relatively freed, he settles back down, and tries to fall back asleep. It doesn't work, of course. Just lying there never does. Giorno tries to do some of those breathing exercises that he's heard Fugo swear by, but all it accomplishes is making him excruciatingly aware of how much control he must now exert to keep breathing, and he wishes that he could go back just a few seconds ago, to when his breathing was an unconscious thing. He stretches his arms out.

To his great and immense confusion, he does not feel Bruno. He stretches his arms out further. The other side of the bed is indeed empty, but still warm. He makes a noise, low and involuntary. He hears another sound in response, and he picks his head up to look in the direction of it.

By the door to the balcony, stands Bruno, his face in profile. Giorno can only tell because of the weak light from the moon, which illuminates Bruno's face in shadow. Giorno can hear the swish of Bruno's dress as he turns to face the bed, but because of the darkness, Giorno cannot make out the details very well.

"Sorry," Bruno says in a voice just barely above a whisper. "Did I wake you?"

It takes Giorno a few moments to get his mouth working. "Hot," he eventually manages.

"Want me to open the door?"

"Please."

Bruno opens the door with a click. The breeze is so beautifully cool it's almost too sharp against Giorno's skin, and he shivers with it. He figures that he'll just pull the sheets up when he feels too cold. With the door now opened, Giorno can see Bruno a little better, but not much. In the light of the moon what was once seafoam blue has now turned into a silvery gray. Giorno can only make out the vague outlines of Bruno's limbs, and with his dark hair, his face is nearly indistinguishable. He looks almost like a ghost in the shadows.

"I'll be back in a little bit," Bruno says, half-twisting his body towards the balcony. Giorno makes another wordless noise, louder than the previous one, but still not very coherent. Bruno stops moving, and Giorno clears his throat. He is struck with the most peculiar of sensations. Not quite déjà vu, but—maybe it was something he had seen in his dreams, as foggy and indistinct as they were.

In any case, he is here, in this bed, in this bedroom. And Bruno is—in this bedroom, yes, but not in this bed. He's maybe not even a few meters away, but Giorno can not touch him, not at these distances. Giorno feels the absence of his touch sharply. "But I want you, Bruno," Giorno says while patting the pillow next to him, "to come back to bed."

* * *

**A/N:** Finally! This chapter is maybe just a thousand words or so short of being the same length as all the other chapters. Absolutely wild. I enjoyed doing an older, everyone lives domestic au though :) Hope you all enjoyed the ride. I think I liked this au enough that I would consider writing drabbles/one shots for it in the future, but I'm going to turn my focus back to "It's Always You" and "Criminal World". I've been neglecting them in favor for this.

There's also art for this chapter! The other half of flavouredice draws, and they did a scene from towards the end: (slash) flavouredice (slash) status (slash) 1208836647917363201

Title is from "If the Moon Turns Green" by Rita Payés & Elisabeth Roma

"Carioca" by Stefano Bollani

Special shoutout to monsterkiss, who ages back lamented "when can they be happy", and I had the terrible task of trying to keep quiet about this while I worked on it. I hope this checks off the fluff boxes! Another shoutout to asheliabd! I was inspired by how you had Bruno grab Giorno's hand and put it into his lap, and I also really like how Bruno and Giorno listen to music all the time in your fic. It's fortunate that Bruno likes Miles Davis, which gave me the opportunity to go ham with the jazz.

I had originally wanted to say more about this chapter in the author's note but... I think I'll just let it speak for itself. If you've gotten here, thanks for coming on this ride with me 3


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